Long distance communication service is something I am always using but seldom satisfying with. It's the main tool for me to chat with friends and family back home. It should be a technology that will shorten the distance, but indeed goes to the opposite way.
From the aspect of transferring information, the existing methods like message or video chats are good enough. But without the body language and nonverbal signals which we take as a granted, I find it hard to express myself clearly or having a good chat. It's bored to just talk with my friends without synchronizing experiences in the same time.
Most of the online communication methods will turn into an awkward situation that we have no topic to talk with or become boring.
It's hard to share an entertaining moment to others within the existing methods.
I can't feel the connection between me and my friends due to the distance and "experience-free" environment.
To provide a fun & easy online communication platform which allows users to share their emotions in a different way.
To achieve that, I am going to look into some example from current online communication methods and game design.
Online communication platforms are going into the mainstream in the moment. Well developed platform with well-designed functions attract a lot of users, and the number of users is exploding. The needs of communicating online are created by the globalization and urbanization, and with the push of COVID-19, communication is shifting more toward mobile and video.
The booming usage shows the increasing need of online communication. But along with the advantages of online communication, users also come across serval problems.
In order to have a deeper understanding of the users, I did some interviews and survey targeting the age group from 18 - 29. The interviews allow me to dig deeper into users' need, and the survey provides a border perspective of my problem area.
Date - 2020.12.01
Population - 68
The design should create a quality communication environment as the physical communication.
The design should allow users to access it in an easy format and can happen in any situations. For example allows user multitask during the communication.
Entertaining elements are important in the design. It can help users to be more focus on the communication..
Analyzing some existing communication methods allows me to extract the advantages of the specific methods, as the reference of further development and design. With the analysis of the communication map I am able to do better on information transformation.
The existing methods of online communication have their pros and cons. I analyzed them and visualized them through making the sensory map and communication map. By combining the infographic of communication map, I am able to see the base ground of my project, and the preferable direction in the future.
My project needs to meet the minimal requirement of communication, and proceeds toward a solution that provide the an environment that similar to in-person chat.
I took some online communication platforms and some entertaining design as inspirations. Since the communication in entertaining design is usually consistent, concentrate and can provide happiness to the users.
For creating ideas, I wrote down some basic words and go wild. I also applied the project criteria as parameters to “measure” the ideas.
Developed some rough concepts based on the previous research and analysis.
The user experience flow of the design should be like this. The user flow clears out the operational logic and the related tools analysis helps finalizing the design.
The final design was decided to be an interactive communication platform which brings users to a digital world that they can get socializing with their faraway friends. I am prototyping the platform with the scene, interactions, interfaces and make it function on the unity game engine.
To achieve the design goal I applied some original code from Kinect SDK along with some customized code to transfer the real-life movement into the designed platform. I built the demo and final project in Unity Game Engine since it's one of the best platform to combine digital world and physical data.
The scene, interface and the interaction between user and their character.
The final outcome is LinkReal - the social entertaining service.