STELLA

Stella is an installation that provides immersive, interactive and social experience at the convenience of your fingertips to explore the universe.

The hardware comprises three projectors, a Kinect unit, and a PC. Images are projected onto three floor-to-ceiling walls to cover users’ entire field of vision. Environmental sound and lighting are aosl installed to strengthen the atmosphere.

For this prototype, we strove to complete one constellation - the big dipper, as a minimum awesome product which shoecases the UI/UX Design, art style, technologies, space utilization, etc.

DISCOVER

Define the problem

Grade school students are simply not engaged in learning from textbooks - especially on subjects seemingly not applicable to their everyday life, such as astronomy. On the other hand, schools are looking for ways to capture and inspire students in learning astronomy, but going on a field trip on a frequent basis is unfeasible.

Competitor Analysis

There are some existing products on the market that provide similar experience. In general, they could be categorized as three types: projector, screen-based experience on digital devices, and planetariums.

Star Projector

Project a 360 degree image which provides some immersion. However, the star map is not accurate and users cannot interact with it.

Digital Devices

Devices like iPad, smartphone, and computer can provide games and apps that teach astronomy. However, they’re not immersive at all.

Planetariums

Planetariums provide users immersive star shows and it is a social experience with friends and family. However, due to the complexity of the operation, users cannot interact with it.

Our Solution

We’re looking for a solution to bridge the gap between existing school curriculum and unreachable planetariums. As a lightweight product, Stella can be easily installed on campus with fewer demands of space, friendlier budget, and easier maintenance and upgrading. To differientiate our product, Stella needs to have all above-mentioned features: interactive, immersive, and social.

Technologies

The main risk was to build the foundation for the interplay of hardware and software. We were unsure of how to utilize a physical control interface to manipulate projected objects. After some technical attempts (Wii, Unreal), we decided to use Kinect plus Unity as the development toolkit.

In order to better understand the gestures work on Kinect and how the interface is typically designed, we did research by playing the demos on XBox.

DESIGN&
DEVELOP

Ideation and Scope

How are the users going to play with the constellations? To make it fun, self-explaining, as well as feasible for the team to develop, our design came down to the very simple mechanic: connecting start. Similar to solve the puzzle, players remember the shape at the beginning and reconnect the single star correctly, and then the constellation will be revealed again. The storyboard below shows the key steps of the process.

Prototyping and Test

In order to validate the concept and test the core mechanic, we used Adobe Flash to animate the process of finishing one constellation - Virgo.

Later, we also assembled the page flow into Keynote so the testers could click through the slides. After testing, we realized few people watched the lengthy tutorials despite the importance of learning gestures on Kinect. Therefore, we decided to handhold the users to complete the simplest constellation - Big Dipper, which turned out to be our MVP.

Space Design

Space design is vital to installation art. We used 3DS MAX to help envision how the final space looks like: the concept at this stage was an enclosed room equipped with 5 projectors, so the user will be immersed in the night skies all around.

High-fi Prototype

The high-fi prototype is the desktop version built by Unity, demonstrating a complete user flow to finish the Big Dipper.

OUTCOME

At the end of 1st term, Stella was widely acclaimed thanks to its appealing visuals and fluent interactions. In the 2nd term, Maritime Museum partnered with Center for Digital Media, launching another project as the continuation of Stella. in 2017, Stella was also selected by our faculty as student work exhibit at Siggraph.