Overview

The challenge, presented by the Pacific Bonsai Museum, was to use Augmented Reality (AR) to enhance visitors' experience at the museum. Usually visitors leave with surface level information and the aesthetics of the art form, but miss their importance in a larger context. 
​
​A condensed version of this project, outlined in four stages, can be found below. The full report can be found here.

Preliminary Research

Observational studies, informal interviews with staff, and a short online survey led us to five main conclusions:

1. The museum invokes peacefulness, which is valued by visitors.
2. Visitors prefer visual learning.
3. The museum environment affects visitor experience.
4. Visitors often use smart phones to take photographs.
5. Visitors desire connection to the exhibits, but the museum's lack of context and cohesion inhibits this.

Ideation

After sketching individually, team ideas were compared and narrowed to four by how well they met our user base and our research findings. After meeting with our sponsors to get their feedback, our concepts narrowed to two: little scenes and touchpoints. Wireframes were created for each concept and are explained below.

Little Scenes

After an optional sign-up screen, a user is presented with a loading screen which tells them to position their device in front of one of the bonsai on display. Once the bonsai is detected, an animated scene is overlaid at scale with the bonsai tree using AR. This allows the viewer to get a sense of perspective, size, and scale. Tapping highlighted items in the scene will unlock part of a narrative about the bonsai on display. Once all items for a scene have been collected, the full narrative will be unlocked and displayed.

Touchpoints

Staff at the museum is limited and are often unavailable to answer questions. "Touchpoints" were our solution to this. Visitors can hold up their phones over the bonsai on display and dots, or touchpoints, will appear on the tree at points of interest via augmented reality. When tapped, the touchpoint will display a box with a quick summary of the related information (A) and an option to explore the topic further (B). Additionally, a map view allows visitors to see where each tree grows naturally, providing a broader context to the exhibit (C).

A. A touchpoint is tapped showing a brief summary of the related information.

B. ​Visitors can dive deeper into information that interests them.

 C. The map overview allows visitors to see the exhibit on a more wholistic level.

Interviews

​Access to participants in the initial research stage was limited. After another round of requests on social media, we connected with a mother and her six-year-old daughter. We integrated our wireframes into this interview protocol
to corroborate our previous research and gain insights on our two designs. ​The mother's interview was conducted using open-ended questioning, while the child's interview had elements of co-design as well. After analysis, we realized the "little scenes" concept would be better suited as a kids app.

High Fidelity Prototypes

Our research showed the touchpoints would be better suited for the majority of visitors at the museum, so this concept was chosen to fully design and program. There are three main components of the final design: AR touchpoints, map, and My Collection.

AR Touchpoints

Touchpoints give visitors access to a private, guided tour held at their own pace and tailored to their interests. By holding their phone over a QR code then holding it up to the tree, visitors can see circles on their screen that overlay on top of the real tree in front of them. These circles highlight points of interest and allow specific points of the tree to be highlighted, just as a tour guide would through gestures (left). Visitors can choose what information they would like to explore further. Pressing "Save for Later" gives visitors access to information from the museum after their visit (right).

Left: Tapping a touchpoint reveals a short synopsis of the information available. 

Right​: Clicking "Learn More" reveals further information on the touchpoint topic. This information can be saved to revisit after leaving the museum.

Map

One of the biggest priorities for our sponsors was for visitors to take more information away than the beauty of each trees.  One way this was included was through the map feature. The map plots where each tree would grow naturally (left​). Each picture can be tapped for further context of each species on display (right). This includes a brief history of the tree: what methods were used to shape it into its current form, its age, and pictures from what it has looked like in the past.

Left​: A world map shows where every tree at the museum grows naturally.

Right​: Visitors can learn about the history of trees and what work brought it to its current form.

My Collection

Since the touchpoints are displayed in AR, they can only be viewed while at the museum. However, visitors can choose to save information they would like to view later to My Collection. The saved information is organized by tree and includes an image as a visual reminder to the user. Photos taken in the application at the museum will also be saved in this section.

Left: List view of the information saved during a visit to the museum. This allows touchpoint information to be read in further depth or shared with others after leaving. 

Right: Visitors can see pictures they took of the trees on display.

User Testing

User testing is essential to test how well the solution is meeting the users' needs and discover improvements. A pre-test survey provided information about participants' familiarity with technology and augmented reality. Scripted tasks evaluated the three main features explained above, while a post-test questionnaire and interview to get a deeper understanding of their experience. Our findings from this research included improvements in the legibility of navigational elements, unclear map functionalities, a lack of a quick overview, and a want for more general information. 

Refinement

A large percentage of the museum visitors are over the age of 55, so a large portion of the changes made were to better fit the needs of this demographic. Legibility was improved across the application by increasing the contrast and size of navigational elements. A heads-up display was added to make save states more clear and onboarding (below) introduced users to the basic functionalities of the app. A timeline feature was also added to show how the trees have evolved overtime at the request of our sponsors. As a last stage of refinement, the touchpoints were created using Unity and Vuforia. 

​A. The first onboarding page introduces how to use touchpoints.

B. ​The second page displays the map feature.

C. ​The third page showcases how to utilize My Collection.

Development

The touchpoints were created using Unity and Vuforia, which uses C# as a programming language. Targets, similar to QR codes, allow the program to map onto a point in real space. The touchpoints are then set at predetermined distances from that target, i.e. over the bonsai tree. The image to the left shows development in progress. The astronaut picture is the target and the touchpoint is displayed above the laptop.

Presentation

The intended tone for this project is playful and full of curiosity. The name "Hi Bonsai" implies an informal meeting to the artform. This playful and informal motif is continued in the logo with the rounded lines and cloud-like shapes that form the likeness of the bonsai tree. The asymmetry of the name helped this illusion. In the logo, "hi" was left lowercase to allow the lettering to wrap around, forming the foliage.