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We teamed up with Departure Lounge Inc. to create an immersive experience leveraging next-generation volumetric capture technology and the latest real-time development software to create a first-of-its-kind Shakespearean experience in the Metaverse. As part of creating this experience, the team must research and develop all of the elements that go into a volumetric production and its pipeline. This includes planning for a volumetric shoot, setting up required shoot tests, planning shoot days, and working with processed volumetric data. The purpose of this project is to help better inform Departure Lounge Inc. of the pipeline challenges and hardware deployment options for a final completed project
Objectives
Team
Emma Bousfiled
Carlos Fernandes
Robert Fiker
Gabe
Brenda Medina
Duration
5 months
Tools
Figma
Miro
Confluence
Methodology
Agile
Scrum
My Role
Experience Desgigner, Research Lead
Responsible for leading initial research of play conceptualizing product improvements and features and evaluating the usability and success of all touchpoints.
My duties and responsibilities consisted of:
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Manage and conduct user research and concept development
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Extensively research experience design methods to better present design requirements of immersive experience
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Work with design, product management, content strategy, engineering, and marketing
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Participate in recruitment activities for user research
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Plan and implement the overall user research strategy and methods
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Conceptualize innovative ways to test and implement an immersive experience
Strategy
I lead strategy on this team by developing a research roadmap to understand better how to design immersive experiences. This semester's heavy asked me to expertise my research skills and workshop facilitation skills.
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My roadmap consisted of the following
1. Shakespeare Deep-Dive
2. Deep-Dive Activity 1, Interviews
3. Journey Maps, User Flows
4. Stage Blocking exercises
5. Immersive Workshop.
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Shakespeare deep-dive
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Every person on the team was unfamiliar with Shakespeare, the First Folio alone consists of thirty-two plays and we had four months to familiarize ourselves. As head of research, I made a game-time decision to focus on four core plays; Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Merchant of Venice. I put together a research deep-dive plan so we could become experts in those plays. My idea when choosing these plays was to capitalize on both popularity and access to existing assets (ie. music, rewritten scripts, etc.).
I assigned one play to two team members, then split the last one between all of the team. I set up a board of notions for us to identify interesting acts/scenes, characters, key moments, critical dialogue, and opportunities for interaction.
Based on these findings, we came together as a group where I facilitated an activity to debrief and vote on the play we would go forward with. Following the structure shown below, we were able to vote on two plays. Later choosing Macbeth as our final choice, the team felt Act 1 Scene 3 of Macbeth had the best opportunity for interaction and immersive play.
Interviews
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To understand what is appealing about immersive experiences, I conducted five in-depth interviews followed by a survey.
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Qualitative Research: exploring a range of processes to capture people’s thoughts, feelings, or interpretations. This is focused on situations that occur in the “real world,” using this type of research is to recognize that the problem is multi-layered and therefore utilized to gain an in-depth understanding of a particular problem.
In-depth Interviews
I prepared a 30-minute in-depth interview where I asked participants about their preferences for video games and immersive experiences. Their answers equipped us with the knowledge needed to begin designing this experience. During this interview, I prepared a series of questions separated into sections: warm-up, about the problem, and wrap-up. Warm-up questions consisted of getting to know the interviewee and their background, what motivated them, and what placed them where they were. “About the Problem” tackled the problem itself, we wanted to hear people’s voices and their perspectives on this issue.
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Key Findings
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Watch Less = Do More
Participants express the value of interactivity in immersive experiences, long monologues lose their attention and diminish their motivation to participate.
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Guided Experience
Participants want a guided experience that feels natural, they don't want to be told what to do.
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Positive Reinforcement
Participants want to be recognized for their accomplishments (s). And not be put down if they don't get something right.
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Use All Senses
VR brings an opportunity to involve all senses, participants emphasized their interest in exploring immersive experiences that leverage the senses VR work with.
Based on these findings we understood that users want an experience that allows them to explore the environment and interact with objects. They like to be guided but not in a manner that is forced or too obvious. It is also important to allow users to do more instead of watching. Users found some Shakespeare plays to be long and boring, therefore adding parts where they could participate would increase interactivity and motivation to stay immersed.
User Flow
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Based on the information we gathered from interviews and Macbeth, we were able to ideate a User flow. We kept in mind what participants wanted and expanded based on our capability to execute the concept.
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Stage Blocking
This is the first visualization of stage blocking, using this I will be able to ensure the user has an experience where they are fully immersed and there is no immersion break due to the environment or other characters.
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Innovation
I designed a workshop that would help me to better understand how a physical experience translates into the digital world. Working with VR opened up a lot of opportunities to transfer physical interactions into the experience, this also brought up the question of
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What physical interactions and cues translate into the VR space, and which ones need to be communicated differently?
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The workshop took place over an 8-hour workday, we used the help of 6 participants, and each testing session took roughly 30 30 minutes to complete (including follow-up questions).
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Every group member was assigned a role, we developed a vertical slice script and fed each participant his lines. It was to mimic a real-live- interactive theatre experience.
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This method was the most informative to me, I was able to pinpoint moments in the play where the participants might encounter flat scenes, unclear instructions, and unnecessary interactions. Identifying these also helped me find the pockets in the scene that could be improved. Using the participant's body language, and verbal feedback I began to notice patterns in the study.
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Key findings
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Visceral Cues
In moments of doubt, users relied on visceral cues either from "UI" or other actors.
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Sense of Belonging
Through interaction and having a script, participants felt like they belonged and were valued members of the play.
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Needs a Strong Ending
At the end of the scene, there is a lack of interaction and participation, users fall off and lose interest.
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Shakespeare Needs a Bigger Role
Users reacted positively to Shakespeare's initial introduction, this speech laid the foundation for the player's experience and placed importance on the player's participation.
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A GIF from one of the user tests,
Impact
This partnership with Departure Lounge INC provided an amazing opportunity to play around with immersive experience, Shakespeare, and gain some knowledge on Volumetric Capture. This project was later picked up by Deparute Lounge as a full-time project and has been carried and presented to many conferences around Vancouver and even international meetups.
I was lucky to help shape this experience, and with me, I take on many lessons learned, many skills earned, and laughs.