Virtual Tour of LUMS University Campus
Problem
Navigating LUMS remains a problem for even people who have been here for a long time. However, as far as newcomers are concerned, it is almost an impossible task and has been a detrimental experience for them. These newcomers include faculty, students, parents and visitors. It is imperative that a solution is found to this problem.
Solution
We proposed an application that is intuitive, fun and easy-to-use at the same time. The application uses a 3D model of LUMS campus which is rendered using Unity3D and provides a virtual tour to navigate through LUMS. One of the key benefits of using Unity3D as an engine is that the application can be easily ported to several different platforms such as smartphones, internet-based and even Oculus Rift.
Process
Brainstorming
In the course of our brainstorming session, we plunged through various ideas. The main outline of the whole process is shown below.
Final Design
The final design that the team agreed upon was using Unity to create an interactive and immersive Virtual Reality (VR) experience that would be used to make a desktop application initially for testing purposes but which would, time permitting, be optimized for usage on mobile phones and Oculus Rift.
Design steps
Storyboarding
Lo-fi Prototyping
We initially made a guess of how our GUI should be. We performed various tests on the Lo-fi prototype using a range of users to find out whether the design had a nice flow or not. The following are a few selected images.
Start screen of paper prototype
Play screen of paper prototype
Hi-fi Prototyping
Below are some screenshots of the hi-fi prototype made in Unity
Results
We conducted about 18 interviews out of which, we interviewed 9 male students, 6 female students and 3 faculty members. The faculty members included 2 female members and 1 male instructor. Out of the 15 students that we interviewed, 10 of them were freshmen students and the rest were one from all the other batches. Our major findings, on a general scale, were as follows:
