SCI_Arc Society
An AR Social Media App for architectural students
Project Description
This APP based on augmented reality aims to fulfill SCI-Arc students’ socialization during their academic life, especially for new students. In this platform, users can quickly encounter new friends and get more connections with acquaintances. In the beginning, registers need to comment on locations in the map where are prevalent and surrounding the SCI-Arc, and each others’ uploaded works in the City Gallary. According to their comments, the system will create more real and face-to-face socializing opportunities between users.
TIMELINE: Jan - Apr 2021
TOOLS: Unity Game Engine, Universal Render Pipeline, C#, Cinema 4D, Rhino
Advisor: Casey Rehm
Agents: Damjan Jovanovic
Soomeen Hahm
Interface and Database
Once users install this App and open it, they will see a survey you need to fill in. This survey works as a Google form for collecting the database for our matching function. There are 16 significant locations around SCI-Arc users can comment. After filling in comments of those locations, SCI-Arc Society App will produce emotion analysis to define their writing styles to generate social connections between them accordingly.
To build up the matching program, I collect comments from other social media, such as Twitter. Then I use them as data to train a model able to recognize various feelings or emotions in sentences and define writing styles as the writing style can represent a person’s personality, background, and interests. Thus, the more similar users’ writing styles, the higher their possibility of being matched and talking physically.
Site
The site is the public space between SCI-Arc and One Santa Fe, where SCI-Arc Society serves the main functions.
Main Functions
Based on our users’ requirements, our App will provide four primary services: $CI points and Navigation, AR Booth, Information Cloud, and City Gallery.
“$CI” points and Navigation:
SCI points are the currency in our App, which presents as a $CI logo that you can collect on the site. Like the actual currency, it can encourage you to complete more tasks, which is socializing with other registers. They will distribute between the user and tasks and work as navigation to guide one walking along with them for earning points and towards target tasks naturally.
For example, as the demo video shows, when my matched friends are in the vicinity, the SCI logo will appear as a dashed line in front of me. By walking along with them, I earned more $CI points and encountered a new friend on the other side of the line.
Also, like the money in the real world, you can spend it on other services in our App, such as the City Gallery and AR Booth.
$CI-Points Founction
Information Cloud Function
Information Cloud:
The Information Cloud can help you communicate with your matched friends by timely showing the messages sent by others. When your friends send you a message, it will appear as an information cloud in front of your current location. So you can hardly miss an invitation.
As the demo video shows, my friends invite me to have ice cream in a nearby store. I consent to the invitation by clicking yes. Then an arrow appears in my view and leads me to meet with my friends. I will also obtain $CI points if I join in my friends’ invitation.
AR Booth:
Once users and their new matched friends get together and start talking, structure pieces from the facades of surrounding buildings will come down and reform as a chatting space, as it were a virtual telephone booth. It will better users’ chatting experience and trigger users’ curiosity to expect to experience it again. Users can also spend $CI points to upgrade a default chatting structure to a luxury chatting booth, which will allow them to match and talk with more than one person simultaneously. A luxury chatting booth will offer a better visual experience and better social networking service.
AR Structure Function
City Gallery Function
City Gallery:
City Gallery is SCI-Arc Society’s essential function, a digital gallery embedded in the site (in the future, the site will expand as the whole city) where registers can exhibit their artworks and appreciate others’ works. It provides a platform to make one famous among schoolmates, a satisfactory way to know more peers for future architects and designers. There are two services for this interactive AR gallery, voting and uploading.
The voting service won’t cost voters $CI points. In addition, receiving votes will boost one’s $CI points collection, bringing “fame and wealth” (at least in the SCI-Arc Society).
The uploading service is not “free”; it cost $CI points. When uploading models, users need to spend $CI points which they can earn by actively involving friends’ invitations, a simple way to gain $CI points in the SCI-Arc Society world.
Immersive Experience
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