Learning outcomes

• To what extent did you realize your learning outcomes?

You can find my learning outcomes by clicking here.

In my opinion, I more than realized my learning outcomes. I managed to create a complete Augmented Reality (AR) experience from the ground up in the eighteen weeks we had, which in most cases was more than I had planned to do in my learning outcomes.

A detailed view of my learning outcomes and how I completed them:

• Learning about User Experience (UX) in Augmented Reality (AR)

During the development of the game, I learned more about how to accommodate for an user in AR. Most of this was through testing myself but also through reading up on studies and watching videos on the Internet. This enabled me to make appropriate decisions on certain topics we came across during the development. Most of these were about how we would hint the player about a possible interaction.

Other times it became clear to me during testing that scale in AR is really quite important and can be tricky sometimes. That is why, in the first few weeks, I set up an easy method to change the scale of objects so that we could more easily iterate and define what scales to use in the final product.

• Developing a framework to be used in AR

The main deal for this learning outcome was dependent on providing a detailed document outlining the various component, while I have not done that, I did produce a number of prototypes that perfectly explain how this system works.

I decided against writing up a detailed document as I had already documented the technicalities in internal documentation within our Notion space, and so felt that it was easier to show rather than tell. That is why, in the course of one month, I made three ‘release’ prototypes on our GitHub. You can find them here. These prototypes all revolve around demonstrating the capabilities of the system in terms of tracking, live transforming and more.

Next to that, I learned a lot about developing for a XR application. This was the first time I had worked with technology like aforementioned, which was why it seemed daunting on beforehand but in hindsight it was not that big of a struggle.

This outcome was definitely completed, although not in the way I had planned. Instead I developed multiple useful prototypes which I also put out well within the planned first three months. Since then, my work has proven to be a solid foundation for the rest of the project.

• Developing interaction within an AR space

When originally setting this outcome, I was under the impression that I would only work on small interactions with placed objects like our client mentioned. These would include clicking bushes to see butterflies and other small things like that. However, after the second week our client had decided to relieve the second studio (originally responsible for interactions) of their duties and instead have me developing those too. This meant that my learning outcome did not necessarily change but it did encompass more than it would have previously.

In the first five months of this project I developed all interactions currently in the game. These include collecting paper, collecting trash and throwing seeds. As well as light interactions such as selecting a flower pack and collecting both the bracelet and compass. I would say I have more than completed this outcome as I have done much more than anticipated at first.

• Establishing effective communication with the client

In my opinion, I have definitely completed this outcome too. It was a rocky road and there were many difficulties along the way but I have always communicated as clear and effective as possible. The main issue was that our client was quite a difficult personality to handle and he unfortunately lacked the imagination to see what I was working on most of the time. Leading to me having to do extra work just so he could comprehend what I was working on, this also lead to me showing less and less the further the project advanced, as it was a time sink to show him the work and said work got more difficult later on too.

I have however, always kept him as up to date as possible while keeping the difficulties in mind. Next to that I always replied to his messages in rapid fashion and with a professional and understanding tone. The final project aligns with what was presented to us during the first week and I feel like we delivered a solution that fits what the client was looking for.

• What went well and what did not go so well?

In regards to my learning outcomes, I would say that I am very proud of, and satisfied with my programming skills during this project. It was the first time I worked on a project as a programmer after shifting to said role coming from a designer role originally. This led to me starting off with questions and doubts about whether or not I would be able to tackle the issues that the project would have in store for me. In the end, I can definitely look back with pride of everything I accomplished. I was able to demonstrate my skills throughout the project as well as gaining vast new knowledge in regards to developing an extended reality application.

Client

The major down-side throughout this whole process has been all the trouble we had to endure with our client. What started in the first week with inappropriate comments and jokes eventually led to a heated and tense meeting during which more inappropriate and hurtful comments were made that were unbased and unfair to us as a team and honestly, really unprofessional. In the paragraphs underneath, I will outline the behaviour our client has shown as well as the issues that made it difficult to work with him on this project.

Client’s behaviour

In the first week of the project, we met Abner Preis, our client, and we immediately had some concerns. He did not seem to understand our study, neither what we as students did nor what roles we were used to working in. He also did not listen and would keep repeating himself until we nodded in agreement. Next to that, he made some comments with undertones of sexism and racism, while these were not bad enough to abandon the project right then and there they do provide valuable insight into the character of our client and the struggles we endured.

Over the next few weeks we sent him a list of times we would be available for a meeting. Most of these were on Monday, Tuesday or Thursday, around 11:00, 13:00 or 15:00. However, more than once this was completely disregarded and he insisted we would meet on Friday, even when we made it clear that it was not a working day for the project.

A few weeks into the project a team member was struggling with their mental health and therefore took some time off. We weren’t allowed to disclose this to our client as they were afraid of his possible reaction.

Later on in the project, after we had the mid-term presentation, Abner sent our guiding teacher an email. The email was, supposedly, of a bad tone and mentioned his sudden concerns about the progress we had made. This came out of nowhere and left us all stunned, there had been zero issues thus far and there was no reason to doubt if we would be able to make the deadline. This e-mail then led to a meeting during which the teachers together with Abner and Joris (team lead) decided to set up regular meetings every week.

The first two meetings that followed went fine but they did not provide meaningful insights or information whatsoever. The only thing that they brought was making our client feel more in control. The meetings were also quite tense at times as I myself raised some issues with him regarding voice overs and other decisions or promised that weren’t kept.

Then on the 10^th of June we had another meeting. During this meeting Abner, raised his voice, yelled at us for not working hard enough, kept mentioning crunch and how everything was not good enough, directly compared team members to each other to shame one about their working speed, did not listen to a word we said and instead kept repeating himself until we would agree (same behaviour as in week one). During the meeting, most of our team members walked away to distance themselves from the heated and tense chat, where at least one of them mentioned that they felt unsafe and uncomfortable.

After that he would be on top of everything over the next few days, sending more than a few messages per day to see progress (even though we thoroughly explained to him that it would not be useful). In some of his comments he made sure to use a suggestive and negative tone (“So no progress.”) when I explained to him that we were still working on what we worked on an hour ago. All of this led to us terminating all contact effective immediately on the 13^th of June after discussing with our guiding teacher.

In the end I am happy that we broke off the contact but I wish we had done it sooner. Within the first week, me and other team members had discussed among ourselves how Abner felt ingenuine and lacked understanding and listening skills. This all came to fruition later on but as far as I am concerned it should have never started in the first place.

Client’s knowledge

From the first meeting onwards, it was clear that Abner did not have knowledge of our studies and what we did as students of CMGT. Next to that, he had never before worked with real developers that made everything themselves from scratch. This led to frustrations later on as he felt we were too slow, even when working at an adequate pace.

During the project he, more than once, suggested some weird game design ideas. I and others from the team tried to explain why it would not be helpful or even worth it to use time to test the idea. This however, was not possible and in most cases he was unable to accept no for an answer. This led to me adding certain useless things within the first weeks as well as trying things out only to scrap them later on. I believe that Abner did not understand how much time something could take and therefore thought it was easy to try something out every now and then.

Next to that, he has no knowledge about the technical/design side of things as all of his projects contain countless pngs that cannot be interacted with and instead all actual programming is done by another person. The only thing that he has done is placing images all over the screen and throwing in store bought assets. (Based on what he told us in the first week) All of this made it increasingly difficult to work with him as he simply couldn’t understand what we were working on and why it was taking so long, but he also did not try to understand. We have tried numerous times to explain to him what was happening and why it takes time in very simple language. Unfortunately, he was not able to pick up on this and instead kept repeating himself about wanting to see progress or wanting to see x implemented.

• What would you do differently if you did this project again?

Very simply put, I would not participate in a project that is supposed to deliver a commercial product. I have seen the projects around me, within studio one, and it is clear that the pressure and tension in those projects is far from what we had to experience. From what I can tell this is because our client was dependent on us to deliver his product and he felt the need to put some pressure on us to see it resolved before his deadline. Whereas the other projects are all research-based, they provide their projects to their respective clients and there is no commercial goal behind it. Instead, the project is used to support their ongoing research.

Another thing would be to speak up about the behaviour of our client earlier. Which in turn would hopefully lead to an earlier termination of contact. That could have also saved us some massive issues and struggles.

Describe your learning activities within the project

• Describe the learning activities you carried out within the various steps of the design model the team used to develop the result of the project.

During the project I carried out several different activities within the various steps of the design model we used.

Discover

This started by researching the issues at hand, the causes and what effects they brought with them. Most of my research went into relevant Unity tutorials as well as looking intro previous solutions I had made and conducting interviews with other students or teachers.

Define

These resources were all combined by me in order to identify what the main issue I was trying to address was. Most of the time I focused on the biggest problem at hand, so that I could later on finish the smaller things in a rapid tempo. The core problems at the start of the project were all related to interaction and how we would make it so that seven year old kids would be able to use our solution.

Develop

These problems were then iterated on by developing a few solutions, would we want the kids to click to collect garbage or should standing close enough pick it up? Do we want to show them their progress or would they understand and be able to spot all of it? This continued for more than the aforementioned problems and turned out to be a prevalent strategy I used throughout the whole project.

Deliver

After deciding and developing a final solution I would then (in most cases) present it to our client through either a video, gif, image or .apk build. This was usually enough for him to understand and provide feedback for, however in some cases I kept the deliverable internally and only discussed amongst the team to then restart the cycle and iterate until I had something I could show to our client.

• What knowledge in the field of immersive technologies and storytelling did you gather and how did you apply it?

Most of the knowledge I gathered was to do with simply developing an XR application. I had never done this before and was astounded by how easy it was to start a project like this for the first time. Unity really enables developers to do so much more with little effort nowadays.

Most of the experience I gained was centered around user experience in AR. As testing our application provided new and necessary insights into how an app like ours could be used, so too did it provide me with knowledge about practices I’d rather not repeat. In my case, I used image tracking to create our application and would quickly notice that there were too many calls made which could quickly tank the performance, this was even without actual art implemented. Next to that, it became clear how UI that is constantly on screen can hurt immersiveness quite a lot. Which is definitely something I will take with me if I would every work on immersive technologies again.

• What research methods did you use to gather this knowledge?

As mentioned before, most of the knowledge was gathered from watching tutorials or other videos around the subject. I have also read some interesting articles and papers about augmented reality. As well as talking to other students and teachers to identify key points and pick their brains. Next to that, much of my conclusions came from observations I made myself throughout the whole process and through the experience I have with playing games that make use of extended reality technologies.

• How will your learning activities help you to find the graduation job you are looking for?

The learning activities that seem most beneficial to my search for a graduation job would be the programming skills that I gained over the course of the whole project. As it was the first time that I acted as a programmer instead of a designer in this study, it has also been the first time that I have been programming for such a long time. I have learned a lot of things and got to experience being a solo developer in a multi-disciplinary team. This has provided me with valuable experience and knowledge that would hopefully make it easier for me to find a graduation job as a technical game designer, which is the role I have been aiming for these past couple of years. Combining my previously gained skills and experience on the design side of things together with the newly gained programming skills and experience would hopefully make things easier for me when I try to land such a position.

• To what extent did your learning activities contribute to your desired profile as a CMGT professional?

In the same manner that my learning activities contributed to the graduation job I hope to land, so too did they contribute to my desired profile as a CMGT professional. As mentioned before I would like to find a job in a technical game designer role and having had this experience I am much more comfortable with the mix of designing and programming as well as being much more confident in my skills in both field.

• How much were you able to balance your personal goals with the client’s?

I will approach this based on the goals the client set in the first few weeks. Not the goals he suddenly had towards the end of the project.

The client had the following goals: creating something new together, getting out of our comfort zone to try new things and (hopefully) finishing the project together.

If I then take my own goals of developing an AR application with interaction, solid UX and effective communication with the client I can confidently say that I achieved the client’s goals through the completion of my own. I went further out of my comfort zone than I have ever been during my studies, as I had never done programming instead of designing in a project before. Neither have I worked with extended reality applications and their development. Next to that we have definitely created a unique, new experience and we came together as a team to do so. The project has also been finished, although be it in the last week, and has been handed over to an associate of our client. Based on all aforementioned, I have definitely balanced and achieved the goals set out by the client as well as my own personal outcomes.

Reflect on your communication and team member skills, based on the reviews of your peers

• Use the peer review tool you will find on Blackboard and have every team member fill it out.

• Reflect on your individual results.

Reflecting on the filled in peer review I can only be happy with the results. I have scored quite high, second out of six, and have shown that I am a hard-working member of the team who accepts feedback and provides valuable input into discussions. Next to that, I have taken initiate for action and have completed all tasks on time while showing that I feel responsible for them too.

I am really satisfied with the progress I made from the first peer review at mid-term to the final peer review in the last week. I improved on providing feedback to group members, motivating other members, taking initiative for action, providing input into discussions, my punctuality and finally meeting my appointments. The only thing that saw a decrease was accepting other opinions, which I can kind of understand during the latter parts of the project as I decided to push through some things as I felt we would not make the deadline otherwise. This of course comes with some discomfort as I make a decision for everyone as I am responsible for the final implementation.

The major negative part in the peer review would be my punctuality which actually has seen an increase from the peer review during the mid-term and I think I have to agree with my fellow team members on this one. I have not always been on time and have been working from home quite often so I think it is fair that that would be my lowest aspect but I would not have agreed with the score I received the first time around.

• Describe what are your strong and weak aspects, regarding your future profile as a starting professional. (What went well and where is room for improvement).

Throughout the development of our experience I have noticed that I am good in pushing through and persevering even when I do not succeed the first few times. Next to that, I have come up with creative solutions for problems more than once and I really feel that that is one of my strengths. I have also shown that I can stand up for myself and be responsible for my work as a solo developer.

Weaker aspects would include losing sight of the project at times, I was not always completely up to date to what my tasks would be and what I could work on next. Another thing is the punctuality, which I feel like won’t really be an issue if I got to work in the industry as that is more of an issue that comes from motivation around this specific project as well as having the freedom to create your own working schedule at some points.

In summary, I feel like I would make a solid professional in the gaming industry not only because of my perseverance but also because I can come up with creative and effective solutions and have shown that I can work effectively in a multidisciplinary team as well as having shown the skills necessary throughout my portfolio item(s) and blog posts.

Online portfolio item: https://modderjoch.nl/augmented-reality-experience-edens-golden-rule/

Online report: https://www.modderjoch.nl/imts (password is “imts2024”)