Goals

To give you a chance to develop a preliminary idea about the kind of experience you will be designing in this class. You will be revising and iterating through your idea over the course the quarter, but this gives you a starting point from which to design.

For the moment don’t worry about how you would implement this vision. Treat this as a “speculative design” exercise: what kind of XR Theater experience would you create if time, money, expertise, and technology were not limiting factors? What kind of XR Theater experience can you imagine?

Expectations

Your vision statement should be around 1000-2000 words. It should include the following elements:

1. A short introductory story describing a key moment in the experience for the participant(s). Written in a narrative style, this story should capture the emotional and aesthetic goals of the experience and should allow the reader to imagine themselves into the shoes of a participant.
2. A “just the facts: overview describing the main features and elements behind the idea:
   • One paragraph description of the piece
   • If it’s an adaptation of a specific pre-existing IP, which one, and how will this differ from the original?
   • How many players/participants?
   • What is the participant expected to do?
   • What is the setting/environment in which the piece takes place? In a theater? At home? In a public space? In a theme park? Etc.
   • Is it time-delimited, or can it be played/experienced at any time?
   • How long is the experience?
   • What technological/interactive elements are present?
3. The Visual and Aural mood of the work, with references to specific similar works (we will expand on this for the mood board and concept art deliverables). What are the inspirations for the work? What genre is the work in?
4. A one paragraph pitch of the piece, suitable for posting in Slack

Remember that you can use images, graphs, tables, diagrams, and other visuals to communicate your ideas.

Assessment Criteria

• Clear writing, proper spelling and grammar, and complete sentences.
• Submission provides sufficient material to generate a productive conversation about the idea/concept
• Engages with the ideas of the class (eg: XR, theater)

How to submit

• Please email me a .docx file on or before class time on April 16^th (Week 3).
• Subject line: [INF 190/295 – XR Theater] Deliverable #1
• Post a copy to the class Slack before class time on Thursday, Week 3.

Goals

To capture the look and feel of your project and identify key visual and aural influences and inspirations for the piece. To give you an opportunity to sketch out some visual elements that can’t be captured by pictures online.

Expectations

This one is simple: I want a collage of images that capture the aesthetic you are aiming for with your piece. You may use an online tool, like Adobe Spark, or just add images to a Google Slides Document. There are dozens of free moodboard makers out there and so many guides that I haven’t been able to decide on any one for you to use.  So work with the tools that you find comfortable.

A typical mood board often includes the following elements:

• Photo Reference
• Drawings
• Color swatches or pallets
• Sample fonts
• Notes and captions for context

You may include any of these things that you wish on your mood boards.

Additionally, I’d like you to assemble an auditory mood board – a playlist of relevant songs and sound clips that help inspire your work. This can be done on youtube, or some other free online service.

Finally, I’d like each of your to try your hand at sketching a piece of concept art for your project.

Assessment Criteria

• Captures and communicates a strong aesthetic for your piece.

How to submit

• Please email me a link or file on or before class time on April 16^th (Week 3).
• Subject line: [INF 190/295 – XR Theater] Deliverable #2
• Post a copy to the class Slack before class time on Thursday, Week 5.

Goals

To provide a visual overview of your design, and to better visualize the physical and virtual spaces of your piece.

Expectations

Whether your experience is physical or virtual (or a hybrid of both), space plays a significant role in conveying your narrative. By weaving details into your environment it becomes one of the most important avenues of storytelling available to you as a designer. 

For this assignment you will be creating a visual representation of your experience that shows the path that participants, actors, and spectators take through it. This could take the form of an illustrated flowchart that shows the experience journey of people through your experience, or it could take the form of a literal map or floor plan showing how the space is laid out, and highlighting key design features and elements.

Assessment Criteria

Should convey visually both space and time:

• How is the environment laid out?
• What are the salient items and features of the environment?
• Who is in the environment? (NPCs, Actors, Crew, Participants, Spectators, etc.)
• How do people move through the space in time?
• What happens as people move through the space?

How to submit:

• Please email me a link or file on or before class time on May 21^st (Week 8).
• Subject line: [INF 190/295 – XR Theater] Deliverable #3
• Post a copy to the class Slack before class time on Thursday, Week 8.

Inspiration

Goals

The UX Walkthrough is the most detailed version of your design yet. This is meant to be a detailed accounting of the experience that a participant will have from the moment they begin the experience to the end.

Expectations

The UX Walkthrough is meant to be a highly detailed document that lays out the experiential aspects of the system in anticipation of a designer or builder implementing that experience. Think of it as a recipe for your design: I should be able to take that recipe and use it to create something that correctly realizes the vision you have in mind. this means that I expect your UX walkthrough to be very specific and detailed about the minute-to-minute experience of your system. What happens when the experience starts? What does the participant see and hear and do? Then what happens next? What key assets need to be produced to execute this vision (visuals, audio assets, interactional assets, and narrative details)?

See this Sample UX Walkthrough for formatting and content inspiration

Assessment Criteria

• Clear writing, proper spelling and grammar, and complete sentences.
• Length: as long as it needs to be, but typically in the 10-25 page range. (if you use the formatting of my example)
• Effectively communicates the experience that a participant of your system will have.
• Provides sufficiently detailed technical guidance to allow someone to implement your design.

How to submit

• Please email me a .docx file on or before class time on May 28^th (Week 9).
• Subject line: [INF 190/295 – XR Theater] Deliverable #4
• Post a copy to the class Slack before class time on Thursday, Week 9.

Goals

This is it!  The final portfolio!

The goal of this assignment is to reflect upon all of your work this quarter and bring it together into a single coherent vision for your Speculative XR Theater Design

Expectations

If I’ve done my job right, then by now your ideas and designs should be different from the initial vision document that you pitched. Hopefully you know more about the possibilities for XR Theater, and the underlying theatrical and digital media theory that can inform those possibilities, and have a better understanding of what kinds of systems and experiences exist in the world already. Ideally, your ideas have grown and evolved over this quarter.

For this final assignment I want you to go back over everything you’ve done up until now, and evaluate it from this perspective. How has your design evolved since you started? What is different from when you started? How have the readings and discussions changed your work?

For your final submission I want you to take all of the things you’ve made, and update them to reflect your new perspective. The older they are, the more updating and revision they will likely require, but you may want to iterate over everything, to make certain it is all telling the same story. Please make certain you have addressed any feedback or suggestions that I’ve given you on your previous assignments.

Then I want you to package this all up into a single unified design prospectus that you submit as a .pdf.  For many of you, as you have been working in Milanote or similar web-based platforms, you will need to export or screen capture your work into a stable document that you can submit as a single file. The final submission should clearly incorporate the ideas from the readings into it, and should feel like a single unified prospectus with a high-level vision plan, moodboard, visual diagrammatic plan of a player’s journey through the space, and detailed UX walkthrough.  If you have other ideation and material that fleshes out your design further, please include it as well.

Assessment Criteria

• Clear writing, proper spelling and grammar, and complete sentences.
• Effectively and comprehensively communicates your design without requiring any additional explanation on your part.
• Provides sufficiently detailed guidance to allow someone to implement your design.
• Clearly demonstrates an understanding of the key concepts that we have been discussing throughout the quarter.

How to submit

• Please email me a .pdf file on or before class time on June 9^th (Finals week).
• Subject line: [INF 190/295 – XR Theater] Deliverable #5
• Post a copy to the class Slack before class time on Tuesday, June 9th, Finals Week

NEW: FINAL PRESENTATIONS

You will be presenting your ideas to the class on either Tuesday or Thursday of Finals week. We have 20 projects in the class, and a total of 180 minutes to present them, so each of you will have 8 minutes to present. Your presentation can take any format you like, but should be no longer than 5 minutes long, so that we have time for a few questions between talks. I will distribute a presentation order to the class prior to finals week so that you can prepare.  I will also enable screen sharing so that you will be able to use powerpoint or keynote or google slides to showcase your idea.