Magic windows that allow us to peek into different realities without leaving our physical space, lenses that reveal hidden layers of objects or navigating new universes within the same room. More than ever, mobile/wearable devices are getting a human-scale understanding of space and motion allowing us to create more intimate interactions with our surrounding spaces, leveraging them as a canvas to experience other realities.
We now have the potential to give life to inanimate objects, tell stories through space, customizing private views of public spaces and recognize places we’ve never been.
We’ll question what it means and how can we blend reality exploring themes such as: augmented space and new paradigms in social interaction, public space and privacy; storytelling and navigating the physical space like turning pages in a book; tangible interfaces, mixed objects and animism; Magic windows, x-ray vision, time-machines and impossible universes; Far away so close: telepresence and remote collaboration.
The course will survey the past, current and up and coming technologies and
experiences in Mixed Reality including environmental augmented reality and interactive projection mapping, handheld devices and head mounted displays fostering a strong user experience perspective on the affordances and constraints of each. We’ll research and discuss the design principles and guidelines for creating mixed reality experiences focusing on the links between real and virtual objects, interaction space and asymmetries between physical and digital worlds, environmental semantics and multimodal and tangible interaction.
Technologies explored will include and are not exclusive to Unity3D, Vuforia, Microsoft Hololens, Google Project Tango, volumetric video, SLAM, image and object recognition, depth sensing, projection mapping.
Students should have previous working knowledge of Unity3D and feel comfortable with independently developing using this platform. Code samples will be provided for each technology/platform taught.

By Rui Pereira