Design Research II: Communication Medium

Our group (Irwin Qi, Will Politan, Rani Qiaochu Kang and Jude Zhu) decided to create a guidebook / sorting website for filmmakers, creative directors, sport professionals, and students.

Stakeholders

Thanks to Irwin, we have a list of our stakeholders:

Creative Director

Creative directors serving for advertising agencies usually need to pick the best channel or select certain media for the advertising campaign. While traditional media like newspapers or magazines are straightforward and easy-to-understand, the emerging media is a combination of confusion. Example like, virtual reality and mixed reality requires speciality headset and limited accessibility for certain user groups, the augmented reality could be easily accessed by user through Apple or Google’s ARToolkit. Also most agencies lack programmers so they don’t have the resources to create AR apps without outsourcing.

Students

Learning the difference between mediums and how to utilize it better. Learning to develop software and hardware related to the field. Students will also take classes with MR, depending on the circumstances and subjects they are taking. This can be very useful for those who can’t be physically present.

Filmmakers

Filmmakers and artists will continue to experiment and use these emerging technologies in their work. Those looking to tell their stories in new mediums such as VR, AR, and MR could use our system to decide which is the best approach to go with. Many traditional visual stories could be converted to these new mediums and these cards will help facilitate that process.

Artists

Artists can paint now in 3D, but they must use the VR headset to do so. There would be some new art forms, not necessarily related to filmmaking. Not necessarily replacing the traditional way. VR can also be used in the fashion industry to see what a piece looks like on someone before making it. Saves a lot of material, but might take more time in prototyping.

Sports

Sport games. Sport practices. Saves much space. Can practice anywhere. To some extent the effect of practicing with VR should be the same, but might lack an atmosphere.

Research Methods

We then chose Interview and Survey as our research methods to know more about our stakeholders.

This is the survey Rani created for students: https://forms.gle/7XPPmALT2vJz1Bh88

Screenshot of Rani’s survey for students

Screenshot of Rani’s survey for students

Based on the responses we received, Will created an amazing interactive graph to visualize the data: https://infranodus.com/wpolitan/google_201124T1658

Will created an interactive graph to visualize our survey results.

Will created an interactive graph to visualize our survey results.

I then conducted some interviews with the stakeholders. These are some quotes about why they use VR/ AR/ MR for their field.

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Girish Balakrishnan

Director, Virtual Production at Netflix

Netflix’s NLab is making huge efforts in content production with emerging technologies. I believe that we are at the dawn of a new age in cinematic production, where innovative technologies merge in new and unique ways to produce truly immersive experiences. My passions lie at the forefront of this virtual production revolution, constructing tools that push this medium into uncharted territories.

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Shari Hanson

Senior Vice President, Physical Production

at Paramount Pictures

Virtual production is faster and cheaper for filmmakers. We can see some great effects before we actually go film them or create them with big CG teams. It helps a lot with controlling the budget and can bridge the director and director of photography better.

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Edward Saatchi

Founding members of Oculus Story Studio

Emmy winning Cofounder at Fable Studio

I have spent years exploring how VR can be used to make narratives more immersive. But I think the future of storytelling doesn't lie in VR movies. We should admit that VR movies are not going to replace cinema. Instead of trying to mimic the experience of films through virtual reality, I believe there's even greater potential in designing realistic characters for AR and VR. Imagine a virtual companion that can learn over time and interact with you and your family naturally.

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Lauren Owen

Creative Technologist and Tech Education Instructor, IDM class 2020 student

I built an augmented reality experience to commemorate the lives of Black women lost to pregnancy-related deaths. I also designed accessible Morse Code learning games for children with disabilities to managing the digital products of one of the world’s largest membership organizations. I enjoy finding creative ways we can do the unexpected and truly be innovative effectively and efficiently as well as reading, baking vegan sweets, and playing scrabble.

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Abe J. Brody

CEO of AR Marketing/VR Entertainment/OOH/Sports Gaming at Everpresent Media Studio

By utilizing our Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and studio post-production divisions, we precisely focus on each of our client's specific needs. No matter how large or seemingly small they may be. We can package these unique features with our traditional and alternative OOH marketing mediums. This enables our clients the ability to maximize the number of valued impressions per marketing dollar. We also focus on Entertainment and Sports Gaming Marketing. Our goal is to implement a fascinating AR/VR experience that allows for a unique engagement with users.