The Future Of User Manuals – Augmented Reality and Smart Glasses (2014)

Introduction 

Interactive Media Design students to participate in iPole 2014: ‘The Future Of User Manuals’ with the Applied University of North West Switzerland, Merz Akademie, (Stuttgart, Germany) and HSE Design School (Moscow, Russia). ‘Integrated Project Oriented Learning Environment’ (iPole) is an international interdisciplinary study platform that permits the development of innovation projects in co-operation with industry partners to facilitate multi-disciplinary collaborative project-oriented working within a multicultural environment.

Educational Challenge

The student cohort had been used to working in teams and had some experience of working with clients with varying degrees of success. Some students had found team-working challenging due to team dynamics and differences in commitment and expectations amongst peers. In order to to create greater confidence in both team-working and working to more professional standards, I run a couple of final year modules that address these key issues. The invitation to collaborate with Applied University of North West Switzerland and Merz Akademie was a perfect opportunity for ten of our best and adventurous students.

The limited number of places presented another challenge – what selection criteria would we use to select students? In the end this was simple we informed the students that we would pick students based on their second year performance with the caveat that they had to have shown themselves to be good collaborators and communicators.

Creative Challenge

Alstom is a global leader in the world of power generation, power transmission and rail infrastructure and sets the benchmark for
innovative and environmentally friendly technologies. There are many technologies emerging that aim to assist people in
their daily work by replacing the paper manuals of a product, with respect to operation and maintenance. Such technologies can be in
the form of:

• Videos and animations, supported by audio or images
• Hardware that allows hands-free working such as wearable displays, tablets, etc.
• Context sensitive links to parts identification, settings, technical data, limits, environment, health and safety (EHS) information etc.
• Augmented reality, where the physical world, information and communication technology meet
• Direct remote support through bidirectional video conferencing

The task of the teams is to start from an existing disassembly/ assembly instruction manual, together with additional information
on parts (drawings), tools, EHS, etc. and to convert this information into an augmented reality supported solution for training or on-site work potentially including real-time assistance.

Process

The project was initially launched virtually using online meeting software to connect everyone then followed by a physical kickoff event in Switzerland for team-building.

The students were divided into mixed groups of 5-6 members from the participating Universities with varying skill sets from Graphic Design, Interaction Design and Programming/Development. Group membership was further refined based on an unusual personality assessment method that involved painting pictures!

After this kick-off event students and their coaches (assigned tutors from the participating institutions) met weekly online to discuss progress. 

There were two online interim presentations and crits with the client during the 12 week development cycle before a final physical presentation  back in Switzerland.

Results

The six groups produced some highly detailed near and far future visions for the use of smart glasses in a maintenance context. Whilst they were critical of the current technical solutions available, they could see a future use integrated with tablet technology. 

As an educational experience  the students learnt a great deal from the project, through sharing practices and learning tools they created complex solutions that were more than the sum of their collective parts.