PERKINS+WILL AX
Augmented reality is not a new technology but it is becoming more ubiquitous and more accessible. Apple’s launch of ARKit motivated our team to investigate the value and use of AR as a tool of architectural representation. AX was Perkins+Will first augmented reality app, myself and two other team members focused on two important challenges: i) the user experience and ii) the content. As an architecture firm Perkins+Will has many digital models but the process of preparing these models for augmented reality proved to be more difficult than expected. The user experience was also a difficult hurdle since most of our users were new to augmented reality. Ultimately we decided the solution to both of these challenges was to be adopt the adage, ‘less is more’. We reduce the size and complexity of models and tried to make them as ‘light’ as possible. We tried to make our controls simple, direct, and intuitive. As our development progressed we would have different users try our app, take feedback, and revise our controls to improve their experience. A direct example of this was the ‘pinch to scale’ control. Initially we allowed users to scale the buildings based on typical architectural scales. Although this created a more ‘accurate’ representation it actually hindered the user experience. The architectural scales evolved into a slider and then eventually became gesture based where users simply ‘pinch zoom’ to increase the model size.
