This week I plan to continue testing some features.
After some feedback, I’ve tried to improve my smart Goals, with the goal of being as specific as I can
Specific
Develop an augmented reality (AR) app that allows users to scan alphabet cards, visually display the corresponding letters or words, and provide the audio pronunciation of the letters and words when tapped.
Where: In London
How: I want to make an app using Swift, reality kit and Blender that works on alphabet flash cards.
When: June 6th 2023
With whom: alone
Also, my Gnarrt chart as I forgot to upload this earlier
This week I decided to focus on the UI design, the main view was designed to ensure simplicity but also to have a kid-friendly look and feel that would appeal to kids. I will probably make the buttons a bit bigger to improve readability.
I’ve also incorporated audio cue buttons throughout the app, as my users are dyslexic children. I believe that reducing the amount of text to read and focusing on auditory guidance will make the navigating experience a lot smoother.
This week has been a bit of a slow week. I haven’t really done too much. I have started to create some notes for my thesis. I was also luckily able to get my hands on an Ipad so I’ll be testing some of the AR experience within the Ipad.
Unfortunately, I haven’t heard anything back from the specialist and the charity I contacted, dyslexia assist, so I’ll just continue with the secondary research.
This week I decided to test out some features. As the AR experience will work with flashcards I decided to try and test this out with a few I bought from Amazon, something I did find out was reality composer didn’t seem to work very well with these flashcards as it resulted in the 3D models glitching or just not appearing. After some trial and error I just decide to make my own, using images from sites such as Freepik and Adobe Stock. Luckily this seems to work a lot better.
in this test I’ve added a couple behaviours to the letter such as once tapped it will say what the letter is, one thing that I should take into consideration is the pronunciation of the letters as of now I am using a text-speech application to do this for testing purposes but since the main focus of the app is letter sound/phonics it may be better to get a voice actor or maybe even use my own voice to do this. Furthermore, I believe the app will probably look better using on an Ipad due to its bigger screen. I’m going to ask around to see if I can get my hands on one, if I’m unable to find one I think I’ll just continue using the iPhone but I may have to change a few features so it accommodates the smaller screen.
after testing I decided to create the wireframe for the app regardless of the device used the navigation should work on either, I’ve tried to make the navigation as simple as possible, and I’ve also tried to take into account accessibility features such as having a speech button next to a button that will provide a mini voiceover for the users such as pronouncing the name of the button. This feature was actually inspired by the dyslexia assist website, I was able to test this feature out in Xcode in Swift using the AVfoundation. I also thought it made more sense to have an instruction overlay than a whole view dedicated to the instructions as the overlay will appear within the AR experience and users will not have to leave the experience to find the instructions.
I’ve also been considering adding in a little bit of gamification. After some reflection I do think this will be an interesting thing to have I am not 100% sure it will be a final feature but I did create some tests using reality composer to see how exactly this could work. This was also made with a text-to-speech application so the pronunciations of some of the letters are not accurate.
