Air Emoji
“Leave Your Emojis in Augmented Reality Exhibitions”
Designer, Programmer | Research Training Program | Jan, 2021
What is Air Emoji?
Air Emoji is an AR application designed to provide visitors of AR exhibitions with a more intriguing experience. Wearing specific AR glasses, visitors can send 3D emojis through gestures and interact with the virtual contents by their emoji comments.
Inspiration
Nowadays, many exhibitions have turned into digital versions. However, all visitors can do in a current virtual museum is to browse the exhibits, which is the same thing we do in the real world.
Could we make full use of the features of AR to provide a more appealing visitor experience? We obtain the inspiration from a popular video platform’s feature in China, Dan Mu, also known as "danmaku" or "bullet curtain." Thinking of the concept of Dan Mu, we tried to integrate it into the scene of the AR exhibition to build a new "Visitor-3D Emojis Comment-Exhibition" Mode. Therefore, the idea of Air Emoji came into being.
Implementation
The prototype is deployed and run on the Shadow Creator Action One, an AR glass that supports basic AR features such as spatial positioning, high-definition display, gesture recognition, and spatial sound effects. The development of the application uses the Unity engine. We apply the basic modules of AR applications with the help of the Shadow Creator SDK and uses the engine's physical simulation system, particle system, and other technologies to realize the animation effect of 3D emoji comments and other functions.
Design Process
Starting from the initial idea, we drew a schematic diagram of our application. We wrote a user story and listed the features: selecting the emoji, sending the emoji, and watching the animation and visual effect. At the same time, we investigated potential technical solutions. After finalized the device to be deployed and our solutions, we carried out rapid prototype development, realized the interactive system of 3D emoji comments, and designed the animation effect of the example emoji. Through a preliminary test on the prototype application, we simplified the process of selecting and sending emojis with the consideration of ease of use. We also abandoned the feature of adjusting the size of the 3D emoji. Besides, we added touchable buttons for Like and Dislike and optimized the animation effect of the original emoji comments to make them more attractive. The final application simulates an augmented reality exhibition scene and provides an interactive 3D emoji comment system for visitors.
Future Plans
Our next plan is to develop a multi-person interaction system, supporting multiple visitors in the same scene watching the same artwork synchronously or asynchronously. We will also work to promote our system into actual AR exhibition applications and carry out user tests. Eventually bring about an application that can be popularized.