Krase Social Research & User Experience

Before starting the 1st week, our client gave us an opportunity to observe how people act during the match. It was a special match since Ajax (home team in Johan Cruyff ArenA) was playing Feyenoord (Rotterdam) who are their “arch-enemies”.

During the game and at the end of the game, we went to space where we will place our prototype and observed the behaviour of customers and how the atmosphere is like. It was really useful and we found several insights which we did not know before.

• Soon after the game was finished, people stood in a queue for escalator and our space was cleared in 30 minutes.
• Many people were singing happily in groups after the game.
• Our space was as cold as outside.

From those insights, we guessed that people might want to stay longer if we prepare something which makes people want to sing more or something which can make them feel warm.

Brainstorming

Based on findings, and taking our 5 focus points into account (1. Place-making, 2. The sense of home 3. gains creator, 4. Sensory-Scape, 5. Social interaction), we brainstormed about contents shown on the hologram.

We split ourselves into 2 groups.

The rule was one person shares his or her idea and the other one continues to builds upon it instead of saying “but” or “no”.

After 20 minutes we gather together again, combined results of both groups and rank the ideas. We came up with 3 different types of contents.

1. Interactive fireplace: We added interactive functions to our previous idea, campfire. If people sing around the fire, the size, colour, and burning rate of the fire will change based on the loudness and pitch of the crowd’s voice and tempo of the song.

2. AI quizmaster: Using Wikipedia content, we formulate real-time questions related to the event. For example, if it is a Bruno Mars concert, it might ask you “Which was the first album by Bruno Mars?”.

3. Showcasing video highlights: We show some movies about the event such as highlights, old clips of performers, or behind-the-scenes and exclusive footage.

Building the Hologram and its Contents

After the brainstorming session, we started building the structure of the hologram and designing some contents. We prioritized the contents using MoScow and decided to work primarily on Interactive fireplace and Showcasing video highlights. Nozomi and Krassimira made animation videos such as fire and content of showcase. Dikshant and Seiya figured out how to make interactive functions like changing the colour of fire based on the sensor using Processing and Arduino. (If you want to know how to connect Processing and Arduino, you can learn in detail here

Since our prototype would be large, we needed to figure out a good way of displaying contents on the hologram. We found it difficult to prepare a big screen, so we decided to use a projector and something could be a substitute on the screen. And we were actually struggling because we were not sure if the projector would work well or not. We tried some materials such as paper, white cloth, black cloth. And finally, our content looked like good when we used a white cloth as a screen.

User Testing

On Nov 13th, 2018, we showed our prototype to people at Digital Society School and introduced our 3 ideas. As soon as we turned on the hologram, people came around and they were curious about the mechanism and how it would work. We asked them some questions about our ideas.

• Which idea do you prefer at first sight? 
  At first impression, people preferred interactive fireplace to other ideas.
• Which idea can help you talk to people from another group?
  Since social interaction is one of the key purposes, we addressed this question, and people preferred interactive fire and AI quiz idea.
• Which idea can make you stay longer?

This question is connected to our purpose directly, and they thought AI quiz and video idea would make them stay longer.

Some of them also gave us feedback that they want to have warm air and burning fire sound. Some of them wanted to see a backstage image through Instagram Stories of performers.

The vision for our Next Sprint

We presented our work to our client, and they advised us to continue to think about the contents. In this sprint, we came up with an abstract vision of the content, so they also recommended building it more specifically.

Our goal of next sprint will be “Build interactions which make people stay longer around the hologram”.

We are hoping to build ideas which will give people a truly “Wow!” Moment!