AR for Social Cohesion while Driving - Prototyping Using Unity 3D

Since there are a lot of concepts floating around of the use of augmented reality technology (AR) in cars and specifically autonomous and semi-autonomous cars, I wanted to try and position the technology as one that is central to the experience and specialized with the focus of sharing the exploratory experience with other people in one’s friend group.

One of the main affordances presented by AR is the one to interact with elements in one’s augmented reality. I was inspired by the idea of ‘following breadcrumbs’. This would mean to incite curiosity to have people follow virtual breadcrumbs left by one’s friends to discover an unexpected fact or information about the location. The system would hence be driven by people sharing their information about a certain place and leave that information as 3D collectables in the augmented world.

While similarities do exist between this and the reviews one finds on Google Maps, this concept would be unique in providing serendipitous finds as people would only know what the information the 3D present after interacting with the collectables.

To avoid an overload of collectables in the AR world, it would be important to streamline the experience by having the user choose the friends they choose to subscribe to. This would also address the issue of trust as well as the collectables are only set up by the users’ friend group. I had used Unity to create interactions within the simulation during which I had picked up the necessary C# skills required to create the interactions required. This activity also revealed the possible design opportunities in such a system and aspects of the system that would have to be prototyped. A few of them were:

• What amount of information would be ideal to strike a balance between the amount of information and the attention the user would need to place on the road in either an autonomous or semi-autonomous driving system?

• What would be the nature of the subscription system used to subscribe to certain individuals?

• When and how far before a collectable should the information regarding the location be presented to the user so that they can decide whether to park or not?

I found using Unity for experiencing design scenarios particularly useful. Especially as I got better at working with Unity, the process of trying out UI variations also got easier. I look forward to further exploring Unity as an ideation and testing tool.