Rafty is an MR game where furniture can be moved and rescanned to create unique boats that can float in your room. Having the illusion of movement by making the water move, dynamically spawning in treasure and fish that could be interacted with throughout the experience, and onboarding through a unique tutorial are some of the features that are included in this experience.
Final Design
Takeaways
1. Another Dimension of Interaction
I learned that there's more to think about when designing 3D interactions that are familiar to users yet innovative at the same time.
2. Letting SDKs Do the Work
Despite being a group of 3 designers, we were able to flesh out our MR prototype by taking advantage of the given SDKs and building off of them to create interesting concepts. By being familiar with what SDKs are out there, we can create imaginative yet feasible projects.
Problem
Multiple MR experiences utilize spatial data, but none require the use of the spatial labeling system.
We wanted to design a game that takes full advantage of the furniture in any given room and uses MRUK's Anchor Prefab Spawner to create a unique experience.
Market Research
Goals
To guide our ideation and rapid prototyping stage, we had three goals in mind to guide our decisions.
We decided to create a rafting type game where furniture can be moved and rescanned to create unique boats that can float in your room. Having the illusion of movement by making the water move, dynamically spawning in treasure and fish that could be interacted with throughout the experience, and a unique onboarding experience were some of the features we initially wanted to include.
Design Decision 1: Static vs Dynamic Menus
MR experiences with multiple interactions tend to have menus that stay in the experience. However, we didn’t want to break the immersion of the user. We do have some static menus for the title screen and confirmation sections, but whenever the floor starts to become obscured, there is more emphasis on dynamic menus that must be summoned.
Dynamic Tool Menu Disappears after 5 seconds
Title Page Follows Camera
Design Decision 2: Safety First!
We knew that moving around on furniture could be dangerous, especially when there’s a 3D model placed onto the furniture. If the user has not scanned the furniture well, 3D model could be placed off, things can move.
To prevent harm, we added a menu to change the opacity of the water, an essential interaction to prevent people from tripping when stepping outside their raft. Raft prefabs have also been designed to not have any fake walls.
In Game Menu Locked to controller, doesn't take much view
Settings Water Opacity Slider
Visual Dev
Branding
UI Designs
Rigging in Blender
Test Animation
Future Iterations
For us, Mixed Reality development was really new, and there were a few features we couldn’t include in this iteration.
1. Rescanning during the experience
Prevents users from truly moving around their furniture as much as they want. Because we were using MRUK which replaces OVRSceneManager, not possible to call rescanning the scene.
2. Converting the project to hand tracking
Controllers prevented users from crawling around their rafts, also had detachment from the different objects when picking up objects.
3. Quest 2 Integration
This iteration is limited to the Quest 3 as furniture must be labeled. For more accessibility however, 3D models could be placed using only spatial anchors to allow Quest 2 and Quest Pro users to also try out Rafty.
Thank you!
Thank you to the instructors at DT for giving us valuable conceptual feedback, and all the students who user tested our game along the way! We wouldn’t have made it this far without your input and support.
