LetgoXR

An emerging community to let go of things with mixed reality to construct a better future-self

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Inspiration

Imagine being able to record and spatially place any thought that crosses your mind directly into your environment for others to see, engage, and take away from. This is a form of thought or memory dumping, and can be a way for you to spatially save any significant moment to your community members, and vice versa. Over time, you’ll be able to walk through a mixed reality (MR) environment where many different thoughts, moods, confessions, and questions co-exist to preserve a community presence with no definite end.

What it does

LetgoXR (2023) is an mixed reality (MR) application built for Microsoft HoloLens 2 that stores people’s memories based on location and allows users to create a memory they wish to let go of. With LetgoXR, users can first navigate through a collection of stories already released and spatially visualized by nearby community members. Users will be present with these stories and then be provided with the opportunity to also let go of something they are holding onto. It will be an immersive experience that will allow them to self-reflect, discover deeper into their mental well-being, and socially connect to the community.

How we built it

This MR application was built on Unity OpenXR using the Microsoft Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK3) with some custom scripting in C#. It was then deployed to be experienced at a specific site using the HoloLens 2. Other supporting visual and technical assets were supplemented with various creation tools including Blender, Adobe Creative Suite, and Unreal Game Engine,

Challenges we ran into

  • Storytelling challenges when identifying a core narrative with a beginning, middle, and end
  • Building in the social aspect of community presence into our main concept
  • Technical challenges and bugs within our creation tools (e.g., Unity C# bugs, MRTK3, deployment)
  • Identifying an appropriate environment to showcase our final app

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • User testing early and continuously during the design process
  • Team collaboration
  • Group work ethic and commitment
  • Asking for help early to the appropriate mentors and specialists
  • Making new friendships :)

What we learned

  • How to collaborate more effectively
  • How to tell better stories
  • How to optimize workflow around the tools used (MRTK, Unity)
  • Troubleshooting

What's next for LetgoXR

In the near future, LetgoXR will integrate a feature for users to record a memory spatially and customize the 3D assets that will store these recordings to be let go of. AI integration and generative art features will be incorporated for better visualization.

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