Public Interest Tech & Augmented Reality
Hospitable design for new realities
A fond fascination for tech and story has influenced work and play across my entire life. My undergrad honors thesis in 2005 studied then-nascent Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), making the argument that blurring the lines between fiction and reality could help us to rediscover wonder and delight.
I still believe that! But I now understand the need to design with care and consent — immersive technologies can also distort realities in ways that cause harm.
In December 2022, I completed a Master of Science in Public Interest Technology (“PIT” — Bruce Schneier maintains a fantastic resource guide about this relatively new discipline), seeking answers to these questions:
How can PIT principles blend with UX practice to care for real humans in digital spaces?
What does caring product design look like in an anticipated future of wearable consumer AR?
Public Interest Technology
In December 2022, I graduated with Distinction from Arizona State University’s inaugural Master’s program in Public Interest Technology. My studies were focused on the ethics of care for consumer Augmented Reality.
Academic honors
Maintained a 4.0 GPA
Recipient, Champion of the Future award
Recipient, Charter Award for upholding the value of “Access”
Recipient, Seize the Moment grant funding
Master of Science, 2022
Speaking Engagement
Digital Hospitality: Bridging PIT principles & UX practice
-
GETS at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, May 2023
In reflecting on Eastern and Western hospitality practices, we can nurture a deeper understanding of our relationship to “the other” and how the guest–host relationship can inform our product decisions and designcraft.
Building on the writings of ethical philosophers and product designers, I presented a model for folding PIT principles into UX design: Embrace the Road (humility & reflexivity), Pitch Your Camp (inclusion & wonder), Lower Your Guard (‘hospitableness’ & anticipation), Adjust Your Course (responsiveness).
Augmented Reality
My graduate work makes the case that wearable consumer AR is uniquely poised to transform our societal relationship to embodied and spatial computing. Care is required, though. Wearables are personal, intimate devices with unprecedented access to our data and context — and, increasingly, the ability to influence our perception and behavior. As product designers, we need to be thinking now about what it means to guard the well-being and dignity of not only our users, but bystanders.
My writing and project work focuses not only on the technology, but on societal, narrative, UX, and product design considerations for this anticipated future.
PIT Technological Focus
Care for Reality
“Care for Reality: Ethical design for public Augmented Reality experiences” surveys the history of consumer XR and anticipates the likelihood of a near-future tipping point in which wearable AR becomes public, persistent, and prevalent, as we have seen with the general computing following the launch of Apple’s iPhone in 2007.
Capstone
CARE FOR THE GUEST considers the person wearing the device: body (e.g., ergonomics, situational awareness, fatigue & eyestrain, motion sickness), mind (e.g., emotional bleed, distraction & overstimulation, human connection), and self (e.g., clarity, agency, identity, privacy).
CARE FOR THE BYSTANDER considers other people in the sensed environment of the wearer: their awareness of the wearer’s computing context and human connection to them, as well considerations for their agency and consent.
CARE FOR REALITY is focused less on practical instructions than reflexive values: How do we make product decisions that add meaning to, rather than outright replace, the beauty of reality? I propose four guiding principles: uplift humans, prioritize the real, minimize sensing, support easy & powerful control by the wearer.
Elevate AR
An elevator button panel is an unexpected physical UI input, but AR narratives can take surprising and visceral forms.
I led a grant-funded, cross-disciplinary team of undergraduate and graduate students in a multifaceted exploration of AR storytelling using Apple’s ARKit.
As project lead, I coordinated the efforts of separate teams focused on narrative, design, and engineering considerations. I used the project as an opportunity to pursue my own PIT questions about the ethics of care for hospitable design of AR experiences intended for public spaces.
The final outcomes for the project included an iOS prototype and a public showcase.
A platform for AR storytelling
Welcome to ÆGIS
Welcome to ÆGIS outlines a sample experience demonstrating the narrative potential of the Elevate AR platform and showcasing a practical product implementation of the theoretical “Care for Reality” guidelines proposed in my capstone.
An Elevate AR narrative
The player takes on the role of a courier, newly hired at the corporate headquarters of the powerful and mysterious ÆGIS. By using an elevator panel to physically travel the floors of a public building, the player likewise “visits” different departments of ÆGIS, making alliances — and enemies — along the way.
Implementation
An episodic audio drama unfolds through conversations “overheard” on various floors; an inventory of documents and messages can be collected and viewed in companion iOS app. The elevator also displays an AR “window” fixed to the elevator wall, from which the player receives two sources of dynamic feedback:
A world-scale cityscape reflects vertical travel, but also demonstrates the effect of player choices as the world becomes more hopeful or dystopian.
An animated bird visits the window, building a nest from materials it finds in the city. The bird’s well-being is affected by the player decisions, and bits of foraged nest-making materials also lend to narrative and world-building.
Lyric Peate
Lead UX/UI Analyst at NAU (reporting to me)
