My Role
UI/UX Designer
Duration
6 Weeks
Team members
Marina Roos Guthmann
Xianghan Wang
Sounak Ghosh
Stacey Yao
Tool used
Miro
Figma
illustrations
My contributions
User research
Journey map
Wireframe
Prototyping
Won the Accessible AR Design Challenge held as part of the UX Design class at NYU's IDM program. It was chosen out of seven teams to be developed into an app by the creative agency, Rose Digital.
Project overview
Our program has an accessible AR design challenge, my team wanted to design the Spatial Augmented Reality Game experience that aims to provide a practical and engaging entertainment option for people with visual impairment.
Research
Our team conducted user interviews with blind people through online Zoom calls:
• Normal day routine for people with visual impairment
• Things to do in their free time to relax
• Do they like playing games? What kind of games?
• Difficulties to overcome while playing game
We highlighted the key features that a visually impaired user will benefit from:
1. Rich audio and sound for clear cues
2. Training mode
3. An attractive storyline
4. Connection with other players
5. Haptic feedback to avoid audio overload
6. Description and video in the app store
How might we design a mobile AR game for people with visual impairment?
Our team decided to design a mobile app that provides users play in a single or multiplayer mode at a safe and well-known place of their preference. Also, It will provide an engaging experience combining storytelling, background music, sounds, haptic feedback, and a high probability of plot twists.
Design
Our narrative takes place in a "dollhouse" that is placed in front of the player using augmented reality. We were inspired by noir and mystery genres. We looked at board games like Mafia, Clue, Who’s the murderer (Chinese game show), Papa Sangre (mobile game). Play-testing the game helped eliminate assumptions and refine the experience.
1. Can be played by 4-6 players
2. There is always one detective and one killer
3. All characters assigned at random
4. The objective of the game is to catch the killer
5. Players will look for clues and then vote on who they suspect
6. If an innocent player is voted at the end, they lose and the killer wins
There would be an onboarding or training mode for players to figure out how the game works before jumping into it. This would also allow visually impaired users to change the settings to what works best for them. Our considerations included the signup process, matchmaking and/or inviting friends to play, possible barriers, and opportunities.
Our team created two different styles of visuals. After we voted and asked the visual people what they thought, we decided to use the second version as our main sketch.
User onboarding
User flow 1: Select option one in the main room
User flow 2: Select option two in the main room
Share clues
Other setting
If you are interested in our game, please open the link in the Figma on the right to open a new experience.
From our research, we knew that providing as many options as we could in the game settings would help users customize their own experience.
Font-size, contrast, separate channels for audio volumes (music, narration, game), and even control to turn haptic vibration on or off. This gives the user control of their own experience.
Ultimately, such a "dollhouse" style AR game is not new, but still a unique approach to the idea. The fact that it can be multiplayer and other players are seen within the dollhouse is definitely an interesting social experience. This format of AR gameplay has the potential to be used in many different scenarios. Content can change, while game dynamics remain the same. For example, the dollhouse becomes an educational museum journey where clues become art pieces instead. Or, in a brand marketing campaign, the clues become different products of a brand and the narrative tells the brand/company's journey and story.
