Beac

Skills used: Persona creation, Swift, ARKit, Mockup Design, Google Firebase, XCode, Illustrator 

I believe Augmented Reality will be the next big leap in interaction design. AR technology has come a very long way over the past couple of years, and I feel that it has reached the point where the technology is accessible enough to provide value to the average consumer. This is largely in part thanks to new development tools and libraries like Apple's ARKit, which makes the development of AR apps easier than ever. 

That's why when it came time to deciding on what the focus of my senior thesis would be, I capitalized on the opportunity to apply my UX design and development skills and  learn about the fundamentals of Augmented Reality at the same time.    

This dual opportunity became the catalyst in concept creation and development of Beac.

 
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Beac Description and pitch

Have you ever had that experience trying to meet up with family and friends at a crowded concert, sports event, or restaurant? Even though you know the building they are in, you don't know EXACTLY where they are? What was supposed to be a fun time out now has turned a stressful real life version of "Where's Waldo". We have apps like Find My Friends and the map feature on SnapChat to help us locate people by us, but they only show their relative position and you have to orient yourself to the direction you are facing physically.

That is why I developed Beac, an augmented reality app that helps you find the EXACT location of your friends and family in a 3D Space using your phone's camera. To find someone, they simply place a waypoint. When a waypoint is placed, the latitude and longitude of the user's waypoint is then stored into a Firebase database. When the other user wants to view that user's position, the coordinates are then translated into anchor points that are able to place in the AR 3D plane. 

Research

Before I dove into the creation of Beac, I needed to know who exactly I was making this app for. What really drew me into this project was that this was a problem that I've personally experienced on numerous occasions. First hand experience with a problem can be very beneficial. However, as I stated in my design process, great experiences come from looking from the perspectives of others, not just yourself. So, after interviewing friends and classmates about problems they have when being out with friends, I built the persona that represented my core audience: Social Sam. 

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Persona - Social Sam

Samantha (friends like to call her Sam for short) is an extroverted 21 year old senior who is living her last year at school to the fullest. Leaving school with a solid GPA and a potential job offer in the works, Sam wants to spend this fleeting time by spending time with her core group of friends. Though she prefers to be with this core group when going out, she's the kind of person that has no problem giving her attention to any friend or acquaintance that crosses her path. Her extroverted nature is what finds her constantly looking for where her friends are, though she knows full well that they are still in the area or at a favorite hangout. Sam doesn't want to waste time roaming around, aimlessly looking for her friends. She needs an app that tells where her friends are within this area, and what direction she should head in.

 

Early Mockup

This is an early mockup of the app which lays out how the app will function, how users will be able to place waypoints, and how users will be able to locate the nodes placed by their friend. The main focus of my thesis was two-fold:  the concept development and design of the app, and to produce a workable product.  This wasn’t just going to be theory – it was critical I stay grounded in “how” users will interact with the app.

 

Testing footage

This is footage of me testing the Minimum Viable Product of the app on my phone. For this test, I placed the waypoints at the hospital and the local chipotle that were close to me. I used inorganik's library, AR-POI, to learn how to create anchors from the latitude and longitude of places stored in an array, and how to view the nodes placed on those anchors. 

 

Final Thesis Presentation

This is the final presentation. On May 15th, I presented my Alpha version of my app and the current screens I built for them. I received a final score of 94/100 on my thesis. 

the Future of Beac

Looking at my college career I can proudly say that Beac has been one of my proudest achievements. It encompasses every aspect of UX design and development I am passionate about and seek to pursue in my career. Beac is far from being a completed project. I showed my deliverable to friends and Interactive Media Studies classmates who represent the core audience. the following is a summary of very useful feedback I received: 

  • The UX could use a little refinement and needs to be liven up more
  • The AR iteslf, though extremely impressive, is still buggy, especially when trying to locate an anchor in a close space
  • Though Google Firebase is implemented into the project, it could be expanded on by allowing user login and an overall more customizable experience

After work and on weekends I will continue to work on Beac as a personal project that means so much to me. Once I apply the above feedback to the next iteration, I plan to deploy Beac for beta testing. More feedback will result in continued improvements.  I will be updating this page as development continues!