Tianxing Xia

Information Experience Design (MA)

About

Tianxing’s works involve photography, typography, interactive multimedia experience and experimental approaches in visual art. He shares the value and spirit from the First Things First Manifesto and keeps trying on bringing elegant and meanwhile playful design with simplicity as he develop his design language. His design project North Tellers is a good embodiment of his design values.

North Tellers is an augmented reality experience design project. It is a platform centered around AR content that involves multiple media, allowing people to share or save locations and objects in innovative ways and guide others to find them in the real world. It uses real-world locations as a medium to establish connections between people, preserving surprises and fragments from journeys regardless of time and space, reminding users that they are not alone in an environment.

In North Tellers, users represent themselves with their hand-drawn virtual avatars and guide others to locations they share using their avatars. Users can scan their favorite places or objects into 3D models, from seemingly ordinary corners to landscapes that provoke deep thoughts. Essentially, users have the choice to scan any place they find interesting or meaningful, much like using a camera app. North Tellers scans real spaces, capturing slices of “reality” frozen in time, similar to inserting a photo into a family album. Users can share their 3D scans with friends or allow strangers a glimpse of these places’ charm. Alternatively, keeping a piece of reality to oneself is also a nice choice. Those who explore these locations can learn about the thoughts and emotions of the sharer at the time of scanning and follow the sharer’s virtual avatar to the real site using AR technology. Users can stitch their scans together like a puzzle, creating a virtual landscape that breaks all bounds of time and space. This process can also be collaborative, allowing users to create a cozy corner from fragments of real-world with friends or family (or anyone else).

North Tellers has developed a system that embeds human emotions and companionship into the real world. Users gain experiential and emotional feedback from real places, sharing these locations while preserving memories associated with them. The presence and interaction of others transcend temporal and spatial limits through the sharing of places, AR navigation experiences, and the construction of virtual landscapes. A series of design decisions were made for this reason, such as the fun animated style of hand-drawn virtual avatars. These design details and processes aim to remind users of others’ existence, friendliness, and companionship. North Tellers is an interactive experience design project that emphasizes the human touch in a slightly radical style. At the same time, this system also ties community building to navigation, setting North Tellers apart from current AR navigation products.

 

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