Development

The group I worked with consisted of myself, Laura, Angus, and Dillion.

 

We didn't understand much of the brief of the module and how we are supposed to produce something within the time we had, however, we did come up with a few ideas after using Node-RED when we had workshops:

* Barcode Product AR: I came up with this idea as I thought that by going into town and scanning barcodes it would let people know what items are on sale/ reduced. Adding to this idea, we thought that having an AR of different shops and/ or known buildings where information about them would pop up on the app would be useful for tourists who may be visiting Plymouth. This was a good idea as many people now days would like to know when there is a sale and then and there to save as much money as possible. The difficulty with producing this product would be that there isn't enough time to collect enough data for shops and their sale items, alongside this, producing an app that would fulfill the needs of a customer, market research would be needed.

* Twitter updated map/late bus: After using Node-RED in the workshop, using Twitter to update a map would help people to know when and where their bus is and how long it would take to arrive at their stop. The map would be live on a digital view of Plymouth to show when the map has been updated. A problem with this idea is that there would have to be a huge contribution to using the app as certain words would have to be used to update the map, compared to London as it is a bigger city where people are tweeting about it all the time, it would be more beneficial there rather than in a small city like Plymouth.

* Crowd-sourced Painting: We thought of this idea as a way of getting people involved with our project. It was reasonable and in terms of producing an app that works with the timescale we thought that it would fit perfectly. However, going with this idea would mean that we would need a good amount of people participating as only having a few people wouldn't make the project work.

We went along with the Crowd-sourced Painting with a plan:

- Get a large canvas in town

- Create one big final canvas where there are drawings from the general public.

With some inspiration from The East Side Gallery which consists of 29 artists, we thought that by asking people to draw anything, depending on their drawing skills, there would be a variety of pieces we would get. 

We thought of this idea in terms of how to get people to produce some drawings. Eventually, the plan didn't pan out as there were some problems such as how are we going to scan the drawings in, as well as producing a large canvas in the middle of town. So instead we went with:

- Getting a lot of A4 paper with clipboards, pens 

- Asking people around the university campus, such as the SU and the library, as well as Drakes Circus to take part in our Augmented reality wall

My one worry was the fact that we wouldn't have enough drawings for the AR wall that we would make an app. However, we got 260 drawing from students and the general public, by printing out a poster help explain to the people we are asking what our project is about. People were willing to help us out, whether it be them taking a break from revision or just wanting to draw anything for us, our plan worked out well in the end.

As I was in charge of research, Dillon was putting together the app on Unity, where it would show a wall which would have drawings on it. Watching him tackle the Unity app was inspiring as even though he doesn't have much experience in using the software, he got the app to work, with some help from people from other groups. The app would only be able to work on Android.

While he was getting the app to work, Laura and I scanned the drawings in which didn't take long, while Angus made the promotional video:

Looking back onto the project as a group we have achieved a lot. However, personally, I feel that my confidence talking to random people has gone up too. I found that people, especially students, are willing to help out with a project, even if it is something like drawing because it helps with stress relieving. Alongside this, I found that coming up with an idea which uses AR with inspiration from the Berlin Wall (East Side Gallery) can take a turn with how technology can be used incorporated ith art, which is great, not only for people who love looking at art but can also inspire people who may be interested in politics, feminism, the environment (etc) to make a change by using technology which is out there and available to use.