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Research Study
GenZ PM: Project Management for Social Media Marketing
Design System and UX
Star: Design System for Mobile and Web platforms
Design Futures
Client
Iconic Engine
Duration
Aug 2023 - Dec 2023
Services
UX Research and Design
Skills
UX Research, Usability Testing, Concept Design, UI Design
Overview
An experiment in the "Design Futures" of an Immersive Art Experience
Unity Developer, 3D Artist, Game Developer, Project Manager
Collaborators
The challenge was exploring the Design Future of the Arts space.
This project envisions it by developing an interactive, playful and immersive prototype by leveraging the Iconic Engine's Metaverse technology.
Context
This project envisions the design future in an area of Arts and develops a prototype by leveraging Iconic Engine’s Vasoo Metaverse Engine SDK.
Vasoo, powered by Metaverse Engine, is a next-generation social metaverse app offering immersive environments for socializing, gaming, content streaming, etc.
📱
Iconic Engine provides end-to-end modular XR solutions, empowering brands to create, launch, customize, and monetize their unique metaverse experiences with a complete, independent, and cross-platform workflow powered by the Metaverse Engine.
🌏
Problem
Space
01
Inherent limitations
Traditional art spaces are limited by geographic and time constraints restricting access.
02
Lack of Interactivity
Minimal opportunities for interactive engagement reduce the ability to create deeper connections between art and audience.
03
Dynamic Expression
There is no way viewers can express or share their reactions to the art.
Challenge
The core challenge was making art appreciation more accessible and engaging while preserving the essence of artistic expression. Think of it like transforming a static painting into a living canvas that responds to viewers' emotions, creating a dynamic dialogue between art and audience.
Goals and
Constraints
Goal
Our primary goal was to create an immersive virtual art experience that transcended traditional gallery limitations while fostering meaningful engagement.
Metrics
Success metrics included user engagement levels, interaction frequency with artworks, and qualitative feedback on the immersive experience.
Constraints
Key constraints included VR hardware limitations and the need to maintain artistic integrity while introducing interactive elements.
The Process
Research
Conducted extensive secondary research examining metaverse dynamics and global art market trends, particularly focusing on the current state of virtual art consumption.
The primary research included interviews with participants who had both physical gallery experience and virtual art exhibition exposure, helping understand the intersection of traditional and digital art appreciation.
Key Research Insights
Users find traditional artworks lose impact in virtual exhibitions, especially large or textured pieces.
01
Users show little interest in chatting with artists, as such interactions are mainly to build artist networks.
02
Virtual art exhibition expectations center on fun and interactivity over art focus.
03
Users want features in virtual exhibitions impossible offline, like touching art or socializing.
04
Collecting and showcasing rare items enhances user engagement and satisfaction.
05
Design Process
The Speculative Design Process (or Design Futures, or Design Fiction) was used to envision and shape potential futures of art appreciation. Here's how the approach differed:
Traditional Design Process
Focuses on immediate user problems
Iterates based on current technology
Uses existing user behaviors as baseline
Aims for practical, implementable solutions
Speculative Design Process:
Explores potential futures (5-10 years ahead)
Questions fundamental assumptions to spark critical thinking about future technologies and social trends.
Provocative concepts to challenge current norms,
Used "what if" scenarios to break conventional thinking
For example, instead of simply digitizing art galleries (traditional approach), we asked questions like:
"What if physical limitations didn't exist in art appreciation?"
"How might art criticism evolve in a world where immediate feedback is possible?"
"What if we could interact with art in ways impossible in physical spaces?
We had several brainstorming team workshop sessions where we used a variety of visioning techniques like hand sketching, backcasting, vision boards, role-playing, future stories, group dialogues, etc. to imagine the future.
We utilized speculative narratives to imagine future scenarios involving art and immersion to push the boundaries of current thinking, encouraging the team to explore the ethical, social, and technical implications as well as limitations of systems.
“Art village”, “Art map” are some of the metaphors we used to understand and establish a frame for these narratives.
All the workshops, critical discussions, scenarios, design narratives and research were finally materialized into the actual concept.
Ideation
Idea I: Art community
Initial idea was to create an art community and categorize users into curators, artists, and visitors tailoring a series of features and feasible interaction systems based on their needs. For example, artists and curators can organize their exhibitions by constructing their own galleries, while visitors can engage with the community.
Rejected. Why? Too Broad scope.
Through company lead communication and feedback, we realised it was a very broad scope and out of constraint. Therefore, we decided to further narrow down our user scope and ultimately chose 'Art exhibition visitors' as the core users for our design.
Idea II, III, .. After brainstorming and exploring other ideas like Personal Art Galleries, Collaborative Art Creation, Treasure Hunting style art exploration, etc. and finally finalized the Smash Art concept.
Design Solution
The "Smash Art" Interactive Feedback System
Chose this as our core interaction mechanism after considering various options. User research indicated a strong desire for novel interactions impossible in traditional galleries, making this an engaging way to express opinions about artworks. “Egg and Rose” is used as a part of playful interaction, where users throw a Rose for appreciation and an egg as a criticism to the artwork. For enhanced user interaction, users can physically reach into the egg or rose icon to retrieve the respective item, ensuring a simple and intuitive experience.
01
UI Design Style
We opted for a sci-fi aesthetic with HUD-style interfaces, balancing technological sophistication with user accessibility. This decision was supported by competitive analysis and alignment with our 3D model aesthetics.
02
Virtual Space Architecture
The gallery evolved from an expansive art village to a more focused Roman temple-inspired design with futuristic elements, driven by hardware limitations and the need to optimize performance.
03
Prototyping and Technical Implementation
Key Goals
User-artwork interaction
01
Collaborative creative experience
02
Audiences-artists connection
03
3D Modelling
Testing and Iteration
We conducted usability testing with participants varying in VR
experience levels.
50% increase in user Engagement post final iteration
01
25% decrease in Error rate of object pick-up
02
40% decrease in onboarding time
03
Key feedback included
Need for clearer feedback mechanisms when interacting with artworks
01
Preference for UI-based item selection over physical pickup
02
Suggestions for improved audio-visual feedback
03
These insights led to significant iterations, including:
Implementation of a quantified voting UI system
01
Refinement of the throwing mechanics
02
Enhanced visual feedback for user interactions
03
Final Outcome
Results
“Unique and Best Creative Approach”
-CEO
First Iteration
What- First ideation was an art village for the audience to freely navigate through. Therefore, a massive virtual gallery with every piece of artwork populating the space was constructed. Users were allowed to move freely inside this space on a personal flying platform (figure C).
Problem- The hardware we had would not be able to handle the level of details once the entire space was populated with artworks. It was suggested that we should create a space divided into different sections to limit the workload on hardware.
Redesigned and made main focus as the user-artwork interaction.
What- Resembled a Roman temple but with a bit more futuristic touch to it. Since we would like to limit the workload on the hardware, we decided to cancel the movement freedom on vertical space–users would use teleport in order to move to a different layer or section.
Problem- Since there was no conflict between the user testing and the space design, the final iteration of the gallery was to simply polish the existing model, and obtain a good render result
Second Iteration
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