After the acquisition of Seismic Games, I was put on a Niantic Special Project called Project Hamlet (Code Name) at the beginning of 2019. Currently top secret and under a NDA, Project Hamlet, was the special project and an experimental project in many regards with the partner Punchdrunk is an influential immersive theater company called Punchdrunk in the UK (See Article Below). As the article states Niantic and Punchdrunk "have working on this project and the experience will take the form of an AR app". This experience gave me experience and insight as to what types of user experiences a user can have working under the Niantic Real World Platform and AR.
Augmented Reality (AR) App: A Social Experiment Utilizing Niantic's Real World Platform
Problem:
• Designing a app for the real world creates a lot of challenges, especially when dealing with a UI kit for the front end design. Icons need to represent a relationship between people and the real world and required lots of ideation.
• Designing a app for the real world creates a lot of challenges, especially when dealing with a UI kit for the front end design. Icons need to represent a relationship between people and the real world and required lots of ideation.
Solution:
• Icons are typically defined under these categories resemblance, exemplar, symbolic, and arbitrary. In this project I needed to find a visual solution for very abstract arbitrary concepts. For example if a object / person in the real world was inside or outside, or above, in middle or below something, or a person's line of site is focused above, in the middle, or below, or if an object is in front, in the middle or behind something for example. I came up with simple graphic icon set for some of these vague abstract concepts.
Other Problems Included:
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Waiting Times
• City Congestion: Noise and Focus
• City Landmarks: Government owned (Do not distrub vs Open to public)
• Timed curated gameplay and content vs Random free play
• Attention and focus, heads up vs heads down play
• Geocaching activities vs trash and littering - Having Civil Responsibility
• Creating timely player agency
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Waiting Times
• City Congestion: Noise and Focus
• City Landmarks: Government owned (Do not distrub vs Open to public)
• Timed curated gameplay and content vs Random free play
• Attention and focus, heads up vs heads down play
• Geocaching activities vs trash and littering - Having Civil Responsibility
• Creating timely player agency
Solution:
I helped forefront cognitive dissonance issues in the game design that players and testers were experiencing. Cognitive Dissonance is a psychological term used to describe the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. Dealing with a fast, high pressured game design experience, that deals with many of the real world problems listed above. I brought attention to this issue by Identifying this during the production was very helpful UX solution when dealing with all of these problems.during the production. Cognitive dissonance was a pinnacle area of discussion with our partners. Everyone will experience cognitive dissonance to some degree especially when interacting in the real world,, but it was important to be aware of what was happening in the game design so that cognitive dissonance was not created unintentionally.
Definition of Success:
As a small tight knit dev team, I think we delivered a proof of concept to our stake holders. I believe our research and development helped pave the way to other company priorities and innovative's.
Role: Sr. UX/UI Designer
For: Niantic & Punch Drunk
Duration: 7 months in 2019
Type: Experimental R&D
