Design Process Overview
The prototype can be viewed on the website at https://deco3500-duobud.glitch.me/, however, for editing purposes, creating an account will be required with access to the following links:
- Access to the AR functionality files: https://glitch.com/edit/#!/join/8d173570-2a1e-489b-8d41-9cec7d34a77d
- Access to the Chat functionality files: https://glitch.com/edit/#!/join/acf85dfa-34e7-4402-914b-59094f60ea40
- Access to the Duobud website: https://glitch.com/edit/#!/join/63ffadfb-5040-4240-9fd5-f7d9d5560948
As the site uses a free site that will host the HTML, CSS and other files that are required for a user’s website, the site is immediately deployed upon edits made. Select “Show Live” to view the site as it would to others. The use of Marvel App requires authentication to be approved by the users of a project. For temporary log in access use the following details:
- Marvel App: https://marvelapp.com/4757hg0
- Email:momokamp@gmail.com
- Password: deco3500
Immigration has become a topic of much discourse recently with families and individuals leaving their home countries in search of safety and better opportunity. While the majority of newcomers are hopefuls and successful in relocation, it would be misguided to ignore the current social climate and its influence on how one can assimilate into a new society. Social media posts and news stories have highlighted the discrimination of immigrants and the expectations of how people should act, look, and speak, regardless of their citizenship status, ability to speak the language and general cultural background. Through extensive background research, initially through the mental health of immigrants, the focus was moved towards a phenomenon called a migrant sphere (Ribes-Gil, 2011). An example of this is where international students wish to stay “invisible”, ie. not immediately recognised as a foreigner, by staying in groups that speak the same language or carry similar cultural values, which in turn hinders their ability to understand the socio-cultural context of new environment. The discrimination faced by most if not all immigrants makes it difficult for an immigrant to identify between their own ethnic identity and the identity they are forced to portray (Pumariega, 2005) for fear of being “FOB” (too ethnic) or “whitewashed” (too assimilated) (Pyke and Dang, 2003). In order to bridge the divide between the newcomers and those who have successfully assimilated, team TMZ created Duobud, where international students or children from first generation families who struggle with assimilating can communicate within their comfort zone with Australian born or raised immigrants who have similar cultural values, beliefs, and attitudes.
The design process began with a focus on the mental health of immigrants, but the focus was later changed to the factors that impacted the mental health, predominantly the difficulty in assimilating to the adopted country. In order to discover how users can assimilate into a country easier, we performed contextual interviews on both target user groups, with additional usability testing with a paper prototype and digital prototype that would later have design decisions applied in order to create the final prototype. Polling allowed to the team to made smaller decisions, such as the team logo and stickers that would be used to promote the product on the showcase.
The team met during World Cafe under ‘Connecting over Distance’ and ‘Trusting Others’ as domains that were explored for the first few weeks of semester. Hamish and Momoka had worked together with the domain research and looked into immigrant mental health, and with extensive discussion were able to decide that it would be an interesting topic to approach.
Team meetings clarified the functionality, with brainstorms and frequent discussions with the tutor.
Important discussion points when considering the design and development of the application were explored in the first few team meetings.
With the completed user testing, informed design decisions were made and applied to the Marvel App. The Google Map API was utilised alongside AR capabilities by use of glitch.com, a site that allows HTML, CSS, and Javascript files to be presented accordingly. The Duobud website is also hosted on glitch.com with an embedded version of the application and video so all digital promotional material are in one place.
This paper prototype was based off generic chatting application designs. The usability was tested on this and further design decisions came with contextual interviews with colour palettes and logo preferences up for the user to choose.
The initial Marvel design had usability testing applied with both guest and host target users
This is the final Marvel prototype that was used at the showcase.
Certain limitations were that while this was a topic of much interest to the team, we weren’t able to learn anything new as it was an area that we experienced as individuals or people around us have experienced, i.e. the discrimination and acculturative stress that occurs while trying to assimilate into a country that will always identify you as a foreigner. Surprisingly, we did learn more about the way different people struggled, as we explored the space with assumptions that the assimilation process was similar to all immigrants, however it depended on the climate and access to certain types of people, which formed the purpose of the application. It was important that as the designers of the application, we were able to analyse the responses of users and not influence the design process with our own bias.
Momoka was the team leader, and did the majority of documentation and some design work. She worked towards creating the chatting function after David had difficulty in changing the design to match the prototype. She was able to work with Blender to create the 3D marker for the AR, as well as design the stickers, team logo and Duobud logo than can be seen in the promotional material wiki. Examples of documentation she worked with were the video script/ storyboard, and the clarification and finalisation of the user testing questions written up by Nemo, alongside a Google Form that was made for team members to record responses from users.
David was able to work towards the majority of the functionality, with attempts at the chatting function but successfully deploying both the Google Map API and working with Unity to create the AR hidden tip function. Alongside the analysis of user testing, these tasks were time consuming so he was able to fulfils the teams expectations of workload.
Hamish worked towards the promotional material, such as creating the poster and website that would be used to showcase the prototype at the exhibition. He was also able to work towards the Marvel App prototype, linking pages up so that interactions had feedback.
Nemo completed the video by herself and wrote up the user testing that would later be divided into usability testing and contextual interviews with the target audience. The video required the shooting and compilation of the script and shots made. This can be accessible by the site Hamish created. She made additional changes to the Marvel App prototype.
Pumariega, A., Rothe, E. and Pumariega, J. (2005). Mental Health of Immigrants and Refugees. Community Mental Health Journal, [online] 41(5), pp.581-597. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-005-6363-1 [Accessed 7 Aug. 2018].
Pyke, K. and Dang, T. (2003). ‘FOB’ and ‘Whitewashed’: Identity and Internalized Racism Among Second Generation Asian Americans. Qualitative Sociology, [online] 26(2), pp.147-172. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022957011866 [Accessed 16 Aug. 2018].
Ribes-Gil, B. (2011). Immigration and Language. [online] Multilingual Living. Available at: http://www.multilingualliving.com/2011/11/13/immigration-and-language/ [Accessed 12 Aug. 2018].