CityScape
"Pitch" video for CityScape
Team Members: Tinashe Chagwedera, Georigia Van de Zan
Video Documentation: Tara Gutpa
Role: Project Manager, Designer, Documentation
Designing Interactions: Turk Telecom
CityScape was a team project I worked on for a class in the MIT Mobile Experience Lab in conjunction with Turk Telecom.
Problem Statement:
How can we repurpose old phone booths to incorporate VR?
Solution:
Convert Turk Telecom phone booths into VR booths to promote business, exploration, and history.
A virtual model of the city of Istanbul was built up in Unity. Users can fly through the city and take a bird’s eye tour of Istanbul, a perspective of the city that is hard to gain without paying significant money.
Places relevant to Turk Telecom’s business and history are highlighted by quest markers, and users are encouraged to “fly” to these locations to unlock interactive displays of information related to that specific site.
Journey Map:
USER JOURNEY:
VR booths are located in Turk Telecom stores. The user enters the store and goes into the VR booth. The user is then transported to a virtual model of the city of Istanbul, and uses the custom controllers to propel up and fly around the city. After seeing a marked building, the user flies to the top of the building in order to view a data visualization relevant to the virtual location. The process of flying around, discovering marked buildings, and viewing visualizations is cyclical, and the user can explore until content. Once satisfied with the VR experience, the user removes the Oculus and exits the booth.
Bellow is an image of the virtual city. Locations of importance are marked with swirling red visuals.
CONTROLS AND FUTURE IMPLEMENTATION:
We created a jetpack-inspired, two-handed controller. There is a 2-axis joystick controlled by Arduino. The Arduino links to Unity using Uniduino.
For future implementation, we redesigned the interior of the phone booth to lend itself better to the VR experience (image bellow). We added a rotating chair for easy, 360 degree exploration with the custom controls attached to the armrests for navigation.
