HoloBoard

We present HoloBoard, a large-format semi-transparent holographic AR display system that supports two-sided interactions. HoloBoard is designed and built for the classroom as a next generation teaching board to facilitate information exchange among teachers and students immersively and interactively. It presents rich media curriculum materials including 2D textures, videos, 3D objects, AR effects, etc.

Role

AR Designer

location

Beijing, China

Toolkits

Adobe Creative Suite, Procreate, Unity, HTC Vive VR

Duration

3 months

background

What I do

Conducted user researches and discovered design opportunities via interviews/focus groups/participatory design/affinity diagramming

Conducted A/B testing and organized usability testing (interviews/focus group/survey)

Analyzed results and generated reports via data analysis

Impact

A paper accepted by CHI 2021
(Gong, J., Ji, X., Zha, S., Han, T., Ding, Q., Li, J., ... & Wang, Q. (2021, May). HoloBoard: an Immersive Teaching Board System. In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-4).)

Motivation
User research
Prototype
Content development
Usability testing
Discussion

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Motivation

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The importance of teaching board throughout history but restricted in showcasing information in an immersive manner

Immersive display technology has already become prominent. But the cumbersome of head mounted VR has restricted wider implementation

Innovation is lacking in the adoption of immersive technologies into the classroom sustainably and naturally

The growing trend of AR suggests wider acceptance of novel technology among the Generation Z

user research

User interviews + Persona

User journey

User Scenario Summary

1

Display of electronic teaching content in general forms, such as slides, text, and video display.

2

Support writing and freehand drawing.

3

Support situational and vivid explanation(e.g. display concrete and highly simulated teaching materials), guided imagination, and enhanced attention.

4

Support students to engage, explore, experiment, and learn actively.

After summarizing all user scenarios, potential storyboard with the new design was brainstormed and categorized.

storyboard

Based on critical user journey and teachers’ interview, storyboard is illustrated suggesting possible functions of the new product.

Features to be realized were finally decided through survey results and several rounds of evaluations.

Features

Thus, the main features of this product are determined as follows

minimum viable product

Hardware composition

Hardware, based on HTC Vive VR Suite to track 3D locations and realize human computer interaction

Product key feature

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Slides control

Freehand drawing

Double-sided augmented reality

VR experiment

Augmented Teacher with Roleplay/Animation

Augmented Student with Dashboard

1. Slides control

2. Freehand drawing

3. AR Roleplay (for Student)

4. AR Student analysis (for teacher)

5. VR Experiment

However, before carrying out usability testing, a demo course should be developed beforehand.

Content development

In order to evaluate the feasibility, usability, and acceptability of HoloBoard in subsequent user experiments, the following development goals are required when developing teaching content for HoloBoard

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Choose one of appropriate Grade and curriculum content for HoloBoard.

2

Exploit and embed HoloBoard’s unique features as much as possible into the pedagogical process.

3

Design teaching goals that are easy to evaluate in the user study.

Based on the guideline given above, we have iterated our prototype via

30+

4+

2-5 h

2

designers, engineers, and participating teachers of HoloBoard development team intensively conducted online and in-person participatory design workshops

formal participatory design workshops

each intensive workshops

within two month, Jul 2020 - Aug 2020. Iteration and version upgrade happened every two workshops

Usability testing & Evaluation

Procedures

Course content

Results

discussion

Features that brought positive feedback :

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Large-FOV screen eliciting sense of presence

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Transparent screen-based AR eliciting students’ engagement

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Demo course content through participatory design meets satisfaction