Photograph of David Valente demonstrating paper clock prototype • Fisnik Islami
Photograph of paper prototype creation process • David Valente
Photograph of physical mockup of AR clock • David Valente
Initially I was sceptical to paper prototyping for an AR application. I saw it as an impossible and impractical task. However, after not too long I found this to be an ideal method to design for AR. More so than paper prototyping for traditional 2D applications. Due to the high cost currently to making adjustments to an AR application in a 3D development environment and the loss go an appreciation of the three planes in physical space when working on a 2D display.
Mockup of physical clock prototype • David Valente
The chopstick and blue tack combination I experimented with later that day provided for a robust method to trial different interface ideas. In this one the relevant pieces of data would be attached to new planes created as part of the UI.
Photograph of physical prototyping • David Valente
I had the thought to create an additional translucent plane to which additional UI elements could be played on with context to the planets but without the legibility disadvantages that we had been facing thus far.
Viewport based UI mockup • David valente
World space based UI mockup • David valente
Above is this same prototype as a mockup in Sketch. Also made another mockup at the same time with the UI attached to the viewport. There seems to be a continuing consensus that much of the UI should remain attached to objects in the physical world, however, I feel this can be hard to justify when a single dynamic piece of information retains the same context across many objects with differing states. I’m not giving up just yet on attaching UI to the device screen.
As of current the AR application can be done with marker based and marker less tracking. In both the size and position of the virtual interface needs to move in real time in response to the movement of the device, however, with marker based tracking this is done be tracking a pre-defined image in the viewfinder. As of current I find a continues temptation to move towards the virtual object, where of course visibility of the marker disappears and so do the planets.
David Valente 