1. "living room"

One of the papers I decided to read as part of the research for my thesis is


“living room” Interactive, Space-Oriented Augmented Reality by Roderick Galantay, Jan Torpus, Mala Engeli from the University of Art+Design, Basil, Switzerland.


The paper was based on an installation project Galantay, Torpus and Engeli did using Augmented Reality. One of their main goals was to “investigate the design of interactive, space-related aspects of augmented reality” which I felt was similar to my project. They also wanted living room to be “Not just a tool, but also as a new media” , they envisioned it to be used for many purposes.

I felt the paper talked a bit to much about technology, although I suppose it was necessary for them to log what they did, as a reader it was a bit heavy in that sense, although I did get plenty of idea’s from it.

I liked the research method they used, a survey. They seemed to get fairly good responses from it. However I got me thinking about my research methods more and I decided I would do more then a survey and implore some more of the methods that we learned in class.

I think as one of my research methods I definitely want to go out and interview various people in person. I enjoy meeting new people and I find it very inspirational for ideas. I did this in my F.Y.P for my undergrad when making an e-learning game for children. We went to the school and interviewed them in groups and did user-testing. We found it very rewarding and some aspects of the project were changed for the better because of this.

The paper gave me lots of ideas and I feel it is helpful in a starting point for my project. In seeing what they did, I kind of got the idea of what way to go about my project. I can take tips from them of what they did and avoid the problems that they had in the project.

Like me they mentioned that their finances were sort and they used opensource software called ARToolKit, although they did address it’s shortcomings it is something I would like to investigate.

The paper gave me loads of ideas and new thoughts about my thesis.
Is my thesis too simple?
Should I explore something more complex like virtual reality?
Should I use a prop such as their HMD? Would it make it more impressive?

It also made me think about the sound in my project? Sound is something I enjoying messing around with and creating. Audio was my favourite subject in my undergrad. So I would like to do something impressive for my project in that sense.

At the end of the paper they discussed their further research and listed out questions that they are going to explore. I found some of these inspiring and may apply them to my research. They also listed some of the literature that they read and referred to which was a big help.

G x