After brainstorming the kinds of things we’d like to explore representing, we split up and did a number of sketches each, and then got together to discuss what we liked and didn’t like about our sketches, and consolidated a final list of concepts to sketch up in a second iteration of lo-fi prototypes. The sketches are all viewable at the ARMuseum Gallery site.

Our professor, Mick McQuaid, made some interesting comments about our brainstorm list and this reply pretty well sums up where we’re going from these sketches, so rather than writing a separate blurb about what’s going on at this stage, the comment is reproduced below.

“We did indeed struggle with the concept of building affordability into the device so patrons wouldn’t be standing in front of exhibits fiddling with their iPhones. After discussing our first iteration of sketches, we threw out things like having lots of little function buttons and pop-up menus, and after talking about these shortcomings, we decided to approach ARMuseum functionality as a platform.

By the nature of the approach, this generalizes and simplifies what we expect the device to be able to do, which basically means we’re building on the concept of 1) showing active items and 2) giving contextual options for a selected item like here, here, and here. By viewing interaction as a platform and establishing patterns, we kind of get that issue out of the way so we can focus more on the content and context. In any case, we have another round of sketches brewing on this concept, and we’re also going to be sketching out concepts of social mapping more.”