Augmented Reality for the Classroom: A Pedagogy
Martha Rettig, Associate Professor in Communication Design and Coordinator of the Dynamic Media Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Boston, MA).
Sofie Hodara, Visiting Lecturer in Communication Design, Illustration, and the Dynamic Media Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Boston, MA); Lecturer at the SMFA at Tufts University (Boston, MA).
From technical barriers to ethical concerns, bringing augmented reality (AR) into the college classroom presents specific challenges. Students struggle with finding the right tools, and often lose sight of critical analysis when excited by the novelty of working with a shiny, new technology. As educators and designers in the creative classroom, we explore how to bring augmented reality and other emergent technologies into the public university curriculum. This past January, we shared our ideas in a four-hour workshop at the 2020 Interaction Design Education Summit at the Domus Academy (Milan, Italy). This article summarizes our approach to teaching AR and provides educators with tools to bring AR into their own classrooms.
All That Glitters Is Not Gold
At Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Boston, MA), we run AR courses in the MFA program at the Dynamic Media Institute (DMI) and in the Communication Design undergraduate program. To prompt students to examine new technology we begin with asking questions: What is AR? What are its appropriate applications and uses? What are its implicit pitfalls?
What Is AR?
Even though everyone has heard of Pokemon GO, many students still don’t know what AR is — there is always one student who proudly comes to class with a Google cardboard not knowing it is actually VR. In order to give students a broad understanding of how AR can be used we show them examples from a range of industries. Here are a few:
- Ikea Place (iOS + Android), originally released in 2017, offered a new way to shop for furniture.
- Google Maps (iOS + Android) released an AR guidance feature called Live View, in 2019.
- Ford uses Microsoft HoloLens to visualize full-scale models in AR to allow engineers and designers to prototype more quickly.
- Augmedics xvision is an AR guidance system for surgery that allows surgeons to keep their eyes on their patients, as opposed to a distant screen.
- Play The City, created by TBWA\CHIAT\DAY to celebrate the 2018 Grammys, outfitted the window of an Uber with computer vision software. The sights passing by the car on the streets of NYC triggered unique combinations of sounds and animations.
- Mirages & Miracles is a beautiful AR art installation by the French company Adrien M & Claire B.
With each example, we encourage students to discuss the ways in which AR enhances these services or products and discuss whether or not AR is the most appropriate medium to be using. In other words, was the fancy technology worth it? Could this problem be addressed with paper and pencil?
Ethical Concerns
Students consider the ethical implications of emergent technologies in their graduate studies at DMI. In working with AR, we discuss the divide between technological haves and have-nots, as well as issues of privacy, ownership, and rights in digital public spaces.
There are two main examples that we use to facilitate these discussions:
The first is Snapchat’s 2017 collaboration with Jeff Koons that placed a giant, digital version of his sculpture Balloon Dog in Central Park. Though Apple’s [AR]t project has iterated on this concept since, the Jeff Koons piece was met with a pointed critique by Sebastian Errazuriz. Within 24 hours of debuting Jeff Koon’s sculpture, Errazuriz created a vandalized version of Balloon Dog, accessible through his own app, to advocate for the interest of non-corporate entities in digital spaces.
Second, we show Hyper-Reality (2016), a short film by Keiichi Matsuda depicting a fictionalized world filled to the brim with personalized AR content — ads, games, etc. — and touching on issues of class. Pairing that with Pizza Hut’s 2014 AR campaign, Dive into PizzaHut World, demonstrates the fine line we walk in avoiding these dystopian futures.
In addition to looking at existing work, we have students write their own Black Mirror episode (see assignment sheet here). When students take the time to develop their own versions of a technology-mediated world, it allows them to refine a moral framework for the projects they make throughout the semester (and beyond).
The Technology
We encourage our students to make. Making is considered a form of research to refine concept and master form. As educators, we teach the technical aspects of AR — the different types, the current platforms and devices along with their price ranges. But these lessons aren’t guided by mastery of software. Instead our goal is to get students comfortable exploring a range of platforms, to find the ones best suited to prototyping their ideas.
Because the AR space is new, there are few established workflows or platforms; tools come and go quickly and can be costly. In many ways, this can be freeing for students whose ideas can evolve independent of the constraints of a particular platform. But it does put the onus on them to find the appropriate prototyping tools. To this end, we offer an evolving list of links to platforms that are free and easy to use. In 2019, students from Massachusetts College of Art and Design used an array of tools, from Facebook’s Spark AR Studio to A-frame, such as:
- MassAR created with Hoverlay — by Marco Rodrigues Correia
- Kinetic Type Poster created with Artivive — made by Michael Savoie, Victoria Jiang, Quinn O’Connell in Typography II, 2019
- Ghost Memorials by Ceaser Duarte, built using A-frame. Duarte installed marker-based AR interventions at the sites of ghost bikes in Boston, MA. The AR revealed information about the lives of the deceased to honor their stories.
- Food Face by Shihan Tang, built using SparkAR (Facebook’s AR studio). Food Face was created to take the pain out of convincing children to eat their vegetables. With each bite a child takes, a new face filter transforms them into a different vegetable.
CabinAR
We are technology agnostic: technology is not responsible for strong, viable ideas. This is especially important at a public university like MassArt, where students don’t have access to the latest hardware or gadgets, and there aren’t personal or institutional funds for software subscriptions. Further, as designers, our students need tools built for visual thinkers, not engineers or programmers.
In the summer of 2019, we created CabinAR, an open-source platform that uses only a browser and smartphone, so our students could easily create and share marker-based AR content. We want to make it easy for people — small studios, artists, young designers — who don’t have the resources of big corporations or private institutions to experiment in this space.
CabinAR allows our students to quickly prototype AR content in a browser-based editor and share it using the smartphone app (free for iOS and Android). Because it is open-source and uses their personal smartphones, students don’t need to purchase anything. And because the browser-based software offers both a visual and html editor, CabinAR appeals to makers with various learning styles and levels of expertise.
Push Beyond
We don’t care by what means our students go about building a project; we care about the idea. We ask: Why did you use AR? What makes it different from VR? Better than a website? Better than a Sharpie? We aim to inspire artists and designers who have a clear moral compass and understand how to take advantage of new technologies. In essence, we want them to consider if all the hype around new technology is actually worth it.
Resources
- To get started using CabinAR in your studio or classroom, check out our Forum or the Cabin Repo.
- AR-Deck. Feel free to use our deck in your workshops or classroom.
- Is the Art World Ready? Our talk on what we’ve learned about showing AR in the gallery space.
About the Facilitators
Martha Rettig
Massachusetts College of Art and Design, United States
Martha is a designer, experimenter, and immersive artist whose work focuses on merging traditional mediums with emerging technologies. Her experience over the past fifteen years crosses many disciplines, including design concept, visual design, interactive design, interface design, data visualization, experience design, and creative direction. She co-founded an interactive design agency, Cykod, in 2006 and helped build over two hundred websites, and apps from the ground up. Martha currently is an Assistant Professor at Massachusetts College of Art + Design teaching in the undergraduate Graphic Design department and the coordinator of the college’s Dynamic Media Institute MFA program. Website
Sofie Hodara
Massachusetts College of Art and Design, United States
Sofie Hodara is a Boston-based multimedia artist, designer, and educator. She creates beautiful, non-utilitarian experiences with traditional and emerging technologies. Hodara’s work has been exhibited across the United States and is in permanent collections at Tutt Library’s Special Collections and Archives at Colorado College, and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania. She was a member artist at Bromfield Gallery (Boston, MA) from 2016–2019 and is co-founder of the International Institute of Contemporary Art and Theory, an artist-in-residence program based in Mangalia, Romania. She teaches design at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and SMFA at Tufts University. Website.
