Blink is an app-based augmented reality platform for sharing sensory experiences between people. In a world of fleeting tweets and passing Likes, Blink captures memories and moments in a balance between new discoveries and found nostalgia.
Thesis project at Northwestern University’s MS program, Engineering Design & Innovation. Mentor: Antonio Garcia, Associate Partner at GravityTank.
I’ve traveled to a lot of places in the world. Every time I started the exploration, I found it exciting and a little bit scary at the same time — no matter how much preparation and research I did before the trip, it was always hard to blend into local crowds right away, and have a holistic adventure, especially if it was just a short visit for several days. Yes, we have Yelp, TripAdvisor, official websites that tell you all about the POIs — the touristy stuff — but no, thanks. Not for me. Is this a common pain point for the majority demographics? How do travelers capture the essence of a new place fast? Are they happy with their current approach? What do they like about their current experience, and what do they dislike? Ethnographic research and interviews should be the best way to figure out the answers.
After tagging along with 4 groups of travelers from all around the world to Chicago, and interviewing 5 people who use social media, including Instagram to get information before exploring, and 2 anti-planning people who claim that they intentionally don’t do any research so that the serendipity is maximized, I identified a large crowd as the Urban Explorers: they are young, they don’t listen to generic advice nor do they use couch surfing to have people show them around — they expect the serendipity of the adventure, and they love listening to stories and share theirs.
By synthesizing the research findings into insights, I came up with the point of view: the Urban Explorers need a new interactive self-tour to explore because they are more interested in how they experience the journey of serendipitous explorations. They also want to find a way to share their experience and leave their footprint wherever they go.
Then how might we capture the experience — not just the content like what fb and twitter do — but also the emotions, the touch of the sand, the smell of the ocean and the taste of the wind? How might we provide a meaningful experience sharing platform for people who are emotionally sensitive to the environment? How might we find a way to capture, store and create Déjà vu for each individual, without it taking the explorers out of the moment?
I tried different ways of attaching contents to the environment, and came to the conclusion that augmented reality is the best way of keeping users in the moment, while documenting the experience naturally.
After rounds of prototypes and iterations, I finalized Blink.
Blink is an app-based augmented reality platform for sharing sensory experiences between people. Sensory experience is formed by these elements: location, weather, time, sounds, visuals, smell, taste, touch and so on; Blink tries its best to capture all these elements fresh, and bring the senses and emotions back to life when the elements are ready.
More specifically, as a content contributor, user A is able to quickly capture the moment by taking a picture or video, leaving a post and choosing some music as content, and attaching the content to the environment elements; while as a content receiver, user B is able to retrieve the whole experience only when the environment meets all the conditions.
Blink is my first big individual end-to-end design project. There was a time during the design process, I was too obsessed with trying different AR technologies and got reminded by my mentor and my friends of the basic rule: figuring out the desirability first, and feasibility and viability for later. I quickly tailored myself to prototyping the idea and the interactions, and decided to use cell phone, the most common device as the tool.
