Wiki
User Experience Engineering

Wk01: Augmented Reality
Page last edited by Per Bækgaard (pgba) 18/01-2021

Augmented Reality (which is a part of the wider concept Extended Reality) systems like the Microsoft HoloLens or the Varjo XR-1 headset are examples of Mixed Reality: blending the virtual and real worlds. This offers new and exiting opportunities for systems design, but also poses a whole new set of challenges when designing solid User Experiences.

This weeks project will focus on creating systems that work in an extended/augmented reality setting.

This page will be continuously updated through the week; the schedules below are therefore only tentative.

Learning objectives

  • Identify, model and validate user needs and goals for specific market segments, using an iterative hierarchical process
  • Design and validate MVP UX prototypes building upon established interface paradigms
  • Design and validate MVP UX prototypes for emerging and novel types of interfaces
  • Design methods to rapidly measure and validate such hypothesis, facilitating a data driven decision process
  • Map out user needs, existing alternatives, market segments, unique value propositions and solutions provided by your augmented reality app using a lean business model canvas
  • Create user story maps for your augmented reality app in order to hierarchically model high level goals, activities and tasks as basis for scoping the prototype
  • Prioritize what slices of the user story map tasks you would translate into the wireframes and storyboard that would make up a first teration for your augmented reality app prototype
  • Define how your augmented reality app prototype will enable you to validate whether it solves a user "problem" for a specific market "segment" and to what degree that is reflected in your MVP minimum viable product "solution"
  • Use UX prototyping techniques to communicate with a diverse set of stakeholders

Monday

09:00: Online course start and course practicalities (recorded lecture)
09:30: Intro Video (Prerecorded 51:11) on User Experience and Augmented Reality
10:30: Group work (discord; send any general questions to the #questions-to-ta-and-lecturer channel and see replies)
12:30: Brief hand-In of your idea to idea sheet on Google followed by a Lunch break
13:00: Group work (discord; TA and lecturer hangs out in "TA and Lecturer Desks" or may visit groups to do Q&A)
17:00: Hand-In to DTU Inside your two idea (user journey and wireframes as ONE pdf file, named GroupNN_xxx.pdf)

Slides: Course Start and Morning Lecture, plus this Hololens intro and this video to be "inspired by"

Also, use this form to register / appreciate when another group of your "extended circle" has given feedback to you.

Noon HandIn

  • Start by identifying several (existing) solutions that you think could benefit from Augmented Reality (glasses or phone/tablet based).
  • Consider what additional value elements you can add.
  • Brainstorm and add other ideas you may have.
  • Decide on two ideas to continue working with (existing adding AR or entirely new).
  • Update this sheet with your ideas.

Afternoon HandIn 

  • Describe the main user journey (in some form, such as bullet points), and
  • sketch out at least a few key wireframes of the main interactions (using e.g. figma.com)
  • Do this for each idea.
  • Hand in those two sets of journeys and corresponding key wireframes to DTU Inside.
  • Be ready to present and review your ideas to other groups Tuesday morning.

Tuesday

08:30: Peer Review Sessions (discord; even numbered groups join the the previous group's channel: Group 02 -> 01, etc)
09:15 (Or whenever you're done): Group work (discord)
12:30: Lunch break
13:00: Lecture on Design Thinking in UX (recorded lecture)
14:00: Group work (discord)
17:00: Hand-In (LP-like poster and LC, USM, WF) to CampusNet.

Slides: Afternoon Lecture (may be updated)

Tuesday assignment:

Peer Session
  • One group explain their ideas, using the user journey and wireframes to show it
  • The other group gives feedback and asks (constructive and critical) questions
  • Point out at least 3 good elements and identify at least 3 weak areas (SW in SWOT)
  • Use 30 min for each group
  • Change roles and repeat
After the session
  • How well could you explain your idea and what was unclear
  • Select the “best” idea and continue working on it
  • Create a Lean Canvas (template example) and a User Story Map, and refine your Wireframes
  • Hand In your LP-like poster (keynote/powerpoint presentation, max 3 slides) with appendices (LC, USM, WF), which you can use to present your idea
  • IMPORTANT: Hand in ONE PDF file and name it GroupNN_title.pdf

Wednesday

08:30: Virtual poster Sessions (zoom (Gr 01-09), (Gr 10-18) and (Gr 19-25)). Everyone gives individual feedback to other groups (take notes, use zoom chat to write your response ("Gr NN: I like ... but ..."). Also, give your virtual investment vote here preferably with an explanation to the group you choose. Results are here.
10:00: Group work (discord)
12:00: Lunch break
13:00: Lecture on Testing and Validation (recorded lecture)
14:00: Group work(discord)
16:30: Hand-In (LC, LP, USM, WF) to peergrade.io (join at www.peergrade.io/join and type in the class code HMNUHW)
16:30 Peergrading
17:00 EOD

Slides: Afternoon Lecture

Assignment

  • Continue iterating your solution,
  • Focus on creating prototypes and validating
  • Hand in by 16:30 to peergrade a full pack of 1) Landing Page (or your presentation in PDF format), 2) Lean Canvas, 3) User Story Map and 4) a Storyboard of Wireframes with micro-interactions as well as 5) links to or photos (or link to video) of your (executable) prototypes or experiments you have done.
  • Afterwards, review what you are assigned in peergrade.

Thursday

08:30: Lecture/Feedback (recorded lecture)
09:30: Group work (discord)
12:00: Lunch break
13:00: Group work (discord)
17:00: Hand-In (Presentations for Friday morning in pdf format!)

Slides: Morning Lectures

Assignment:

  • Continue working on your solution, iterate build-measure-learn cycles, doing prototypes and validation
  • Upload by 1700 to CampusNet a 3-minute presentation in PDF format (only!) that you will use for the final presentation.
  • This should be based on the latest iteration of your project idea. You may consider including slides with wireframes/screenshots in your 3-minute presentation that show a typical flow through your system -- but please leave out login details etc. You should also explain or show what/how you validated your idea (photos or short video links to YouTube are OK).
  • Include (when possible) the full set of artefacts (LP, LC, USM, WF, Validation Documentation) as appendices.
  • You may still need to practice pitching your idea and solution based on the presentation you hand in, so that you're ready to pitch it the following morning to all other group.
  • Make sure you can do your presentation in 3 minutes (or less) -- this usually takes some practice.
  • However, you will be allowed to spend 2 more minutes on showing a typical flow of using your system or a small video snippet, if you include screenshots/wireframes or a working link in your pdf file.

Friday

08:30: Group Presentations ((zoom ( Gr 01-09 ), ( Gr 10-18 ) and ( Gr 19-25 )))
10:00: (or whenever you're done) Group work (discord)
17:00: Hand-In of Report (0.5 page/group member) with Lean Canvas, Landing Page, User Story Map and Annotated (Micro-interactions/Back-end) Wireframes and Validation documentation as appendices in one pdf file to CampusNet.

Name your file "GroupNN_title.pdf" (where title is a description of your work). Include also links to your "executable prototypes" and any video lins, but make sure you have all details of the wireframes readable in the PDF file you hand in.

For the group presentations, please give feedback using this google form.

Results will be visible here.

Assignment

For the main report, hand in half a page pr person (i.e. 2/2.5/3 actual report pages including illustrations, without counting the items marked with a *; plus appendices.

Use the 2-column ACM_SigConf template (part of ACM Master Article Template, or use the 02266 Overleaf template) and hand in one single pdf file to DTU Inside by Friday 17:00.

Mark clearly who wrote and can be held responsible for each part by e.g. initials in the header/section title (see also further below).

Be sure to include final versions of 1) landing page, 2) lean canvas, 3) user story map and 4) annotated wireframes w/microinteractions 5) a link to your executable prototype (or similar) and/or video in the appendices and 6) additional documentation of how you validation.

Make sure the actual landing page, user story map etc are included in the pdf as vector graphics and not just a link to an external resource where it is available (although you may of course also provide a link to e.g. an executable version of the landing page).

Generally, follow this structure for the report:

  • introduction/motivation (why do this)
  • existing work/competitive solutions
  • (major) iterations you’ve gone through, showing how you arrived at your product: 
  • what was validated (hypothesis)
  • how you did (build, measure)
  • outcome of validation, leading to next iteration (learn)
  • discussion and conclusion                                                                                                                                 
  • individual contributions to the project, maybe as a matrix of persons/areas (i.e. did all contribute equally, or was there some division of work/areas of responsibilities) *
  • references *
  • appendices with your artefacts (LP, LC, USM, WF, Validation, …; for each relevant iteration) *

Examples of previous reports

The following are examples of reports you may be inspired by.
NOTE: None of them are perfect (and a few follow a slightly different template than above):

Literature

Abras et al: User-Centered Design (strongly recommended read)
d.school at stanford: Design Thinking Bootleg with main page here (very handy overview to dig into)
Rex Hartson and Pardha Pyla: "The UX Book Agile UX Design for Quality User Experience" (comprehensive overview)
Buchenau, M., & Suri, J. F. (2000): "Experience prototyping"
Kujala, S., Roto, V., Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, K., Karapanos, E., and Sinnelä, A. (2011): UX Curve: A method for evaluating long-term user experience.
Medlock, M. C., Wixon, D., McGee, M., and Welsh, D. (2005): The rapid iterative test and evaluation method: Better products in less time.
Milgram, P. and Kishino, F., 1994. A taxonomy of mixed reality visual displaysIEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems77(12), pp.1321-1329.
Alanya Treene (2017): The rise of augmented reality.
Almquist 2016: The Elements of Value  (webinar)
NN Group (2018): Journey Mapping 101
UX Design Collective, 2017: Design with Gestalt theory
Semi-random blog summary of 2020 status: 29+ Augmented Reality Stats to Keep You Sharp in 2020

Groups

See the main wiki page for the course for links to the group sheet.
Support: +45 45 25 74 43