Formosa 4D

Frequent extreme weather events, urban sprawl and people lack of awareness about natural disaster preparation cause massive losses of their properties and life in Taiwan. In order to reducing impacts in natural hazards, how we learn matters. How to attract people's attention and triggering them willing to learn it is a crucial in the disaster reduction.

Formosa 4D is an augmented reality product to help people establishing the fundamental knowledge about natural disasters. It consists a poker deck. People can play a card game with their friends when they hang out, and meanwhile spreading the information and knowledge of natural hazards to their friends by easily scanning cards with Formosa 4D app. With augment, people can easily access models from any device at any time. By interacting with Formosa 4D, people will build a concrete perception of natural disasters and having a holistic knowledge to cope with a different type of hazards in the future.

Master's degree final project (Individual. During 14 weeks)
Augumented Reality Product

Formosa 4D Intro Video

Motivation behind this project

As a Taiwanese who is living in Taipei for 27 years, I have plenty of experiences about natural disasters such as typhoon, earthquake and flooding. The most memorable experience for me was that when I was 9 years old there was a devastating earthquake occurring in central Taiwan in September 21, 1999. My family and I were waken up by a horrible shaking. We lighted up candles and checked if anyone was alright and then we went back to sleep. We did not realize how serious it was until the morning we watched news. There were about 2,400 people dead in that night.

When I looked back those hazard experiences I have. I realize myself as a Taiwanese, I have never taken this issue seriously. I feel sorry for those people who suffered miserable accidents caused by natural disasters, meanwhile, I was grateful that did not happen to me. This sense of fluke mind happens to me and I believe that occurs to most Taiwanese people as well. Therefore, in this project I aimed to find a solution to raise people's awareness about the importance of natural disaster preparation and create an efficient tool for helping them to learn and realize natural hazards.

a) These bad things won’t happen to me

When I asked interviewees “Do you remember the catastrophic 921 Earthquake?“. They immediately told me their experiences and how terrible that night was. Then I kept to ask them “So have you done anything for your safety after that night?“ They paused for a moment and responded “Not at all“. The reason they gave me was like “ Earthquakes occur all the time; we are told being cautious, and nothing ever happens.“ As result, people are likely to think those catastrophes will not happen to them, so they do not pay attention to preparedness.

b) I would like to learn more but where to begin?

“Official disaster reduction websites, Youtube channels, expert’s blogs, there were number of sites that I found when I googles natural disasters preparedness. They all share similar information but which one is related to me most? And how can I use them to help me to establish correct knowledge about natural hazards?” - Interviewee said

c) Catastrophe is terrifying but I don’t feel it right away

From moderated and automated research, people mentioned that they know the impotency of having natural disasters knowledge but they just do not have a motivation to learn it. Not surprisingly, they said disaster risk reduction materials that the government supplied as health warnings on a cigarette package. We know smoking not good for ourself but I can not see the negative impact right away so why I should I cut it out? Similarly, people cannot see the consequence of not preparing for natural disasters immediately so they turn to neglect it.

d) There is a obstacle for some people to gain information from websites

The information of natural hazards has mainly been digitalized and uploaded to the websites, it became more accessible for most people. However, for those who age over 50 years old, the great majority of them are not familiar with using a computer. They can browse these websites on their smartphone, though the user experience is not that smoothly. It is because that these type of websites are usually content heavy. It maybe fine when users visit by using big screens but for small screens as the smartphone, it is a totally disaster. As result, it prevents some people from using these type of websites due to the bad user experience.

1) Raising public’s awareness about natural hazards and create long-lasting change

Campaigns for public’s interest such as you are more likely to die in an accident if you don’t wear a seat belt or reducing plastic waste for the environmental sustainability. People might notice these campaigns in the first place, but how many of them do really change their behaviour after that? As a project for public’s interest, I want to make something that go beyond just getting people attention of the natural hazards, more importantly, how I can change their though, feeling and behaviour about this issue after they used my service or product.

2) Visualize complex and monotonous information to more accessible and interesting

Conventionally, we acquire knowledge either from books or our teachers in oral way. For something that not easy to explain like chemical that we can do experiments in a lad to understand. But if something that cannot be obtained or presented in a class, how can we learn it physically and effectively? Augmented and virtual reality has provided the perfect solution for that. Human brain as the best compute to process three dimensions objects, thus for learning something like how are typhoons formed or geographic. These technologies will be the effective medium to inform information for people comprehending easily.

3) Make natural disasters knowledge as a lifelong learning

The main goal of this project is not just trying to raise public awareness about natural disasters. Deeply, it needs to be sure that once people notice this issue and engage with a product/service that they will make a change towards this issue and come back to review things they have learnt before or learning new knowledge. It is because that natural hazard preparedness and response is a endless lesson, so that is vital to keep up latest information.

Define

Ideation

Turn learning as a fun activity

Through a month of interview, survey and research, I realised that people actually do aware the impact of increasing extreme weather events and want to learn more about sort of reducing risk knowledge. But reasons prevent them to do it whether is they are lack of motivation or learning materials cannot trigger their interest. Therefore, I thought why not turn natural disaster education to more interesting and suit people of all ages by using advanced technology. Images below are three ideas drafted in ideation phase.

Concept 1 - AR Cards
The first concept is using physical material(Paper) as a trigger medium. They are different patterns on the paper cards. When a users using an app to scan cards that will be presented in 3D model in their phone and they can play around to see more explanation.

Concept 2 - AR Training Game
The idea of AR Training Game is to create a virtual environment that user choose a task then use their phone’s camera to capture the space around them. There will have instructions on the screen so users need to follow it and make a whole task completed. User will receive a reward once they have completed the task.

Concept

Transfer monotonous learning materials to enjoyable and interactive

After several adjustments in concept 1 (AR Cards), Formosa 4D was born. It is an augmented reality product that combines physical and digital elements. It includes a deck of cards with variety graphics. Users can use Formosa 4D application to scan these card and they will depict different 3D models. They inform a piece of information about natural disasters. When two cards both scanned, they will demonstrate a relevant animation such as how typhoon forms or why earthquakes occurs. By interacting with Formosa 4D, users can learn in a tangible and interactive way. This increases their engagement of learning and also reduces learning curve.

Formosa 4D manipulation details

Formosa 4D User Journey Map

User Story

Storyboard depicts how a user approaches and experiences Formosa 4D.

Prototype & Testing

Physical Prototyping

Physical prototyping is perfectly suitable in this project in terms of representing how the conceptual design will correspond to real-world conditions. It enhances the conceptual understanding for user than paper prototyping. Moreover, except depicting the appearance and dimensions, physical prototype is also capable to represents all the features of the conceptual design in this project.

Test everything, iterate, iterate, iterate

The primary mission of user testing was to test out how users perceive the concept of AR cards. Secondly, test users with user interface elements, do they follow instructions to complete tasks themselves without any helps.

Task1 - Scan AR Cards without any guides.

Find spots on a 3D object.

Flow the instruction on screen and go to next lesson.

Modelling in Maya.

Drag 3D files to Unity to build AR platform.

AR Cards Printed.

Final Outcome

AR Playing Cards

Fundamental (Yellow) - Understand How typhoons form.

Preparedness (Pink) - Realise How a signal weather event has influences on different places and how to prepare for it.

Working In Reality