A Walk in the Past

A model of a building is rendered in front of an actual building

Have a stroll through the historic London bridge today.

An Augmented Reality application that takes you through time and relive the ancient times. Explore the lively streets of London Bridge in the 1600s.

breaking!!!

Students from Goldsmiths bring back the first ever London Bridge

The group testing their application at the London Bridge: (from left) Robert Hilson, Asankhan Amir and Razi Refi Rafeek (Captured by Mignan Lin)

To know more about this creativity driven group , we interviewed one of its members.

Who are you?

Hello, I am Razi Refi Rafeek. I am a Masters' student at Goldsmiths College of London, studying MSc in User Experience Engineering.

Who came up with the idea?

I proposed the initial idea of super - imposing ancient architecture over the existing broken or destroyed monuments. The group liked the idea and we decided to pick a spot and the London Bridge was a perfect choice. Many tourists mistake the London Bridge for the Tower Bridge, so we thought, why not make it like an awareness

app. Teaching people a little about history with our AR Application.

What was your role in the project?

Since, I had industry experience in the field of user experience, I was responsible for the overall user flow and application design. I had also helped the group to find out historical facts about the London Bridge, which helped shape and construct the environment of the application.

How long did it take you to build this?

This application was made as our Final project for the Augmented Reality module at our University. The whole project was

planned and executed in the span of 2 months. It took us around 2 weeks to do some research and visit the site to figure out the scale and image recognition points. The design and development was completed in 5 weeks. In the final week, we did a trial run on-site and fixed a few bugs. We also got some feedback from tourists that tried our application.

How it was done...

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3 - 4

Week 5-8

Week 9

Planning

Site visit

Design

Develop

Test & Launch

Coming up with a project idea and researching on how to implement it. We explored the different AR features, such as Image Tracking and Plane detection.

We had a short trip to the London Bridge to scout the area and find a suitable spot where the 3D model would be registered. We also figured out a signage that we could use for image tracking

The 3D models for the houses on the London Bridge were built. The screens for the application were designed in Figma. The user flow was also finalised.

All the models were imported to Unity and we used the image tracking feature from the ARKit to trigger the scene. The Application screens were developed using the Unity UI builder.

The Unity application was compiled and built on our devices. We did a test run on-site to fix some bugs and make a few adjustments. When we were happy with the result we launched it.

Initial sketches for the User Experience of the Application

Demo

Screen Recording

Do you feel you met your initial goal?

I would have to say 'yes'. This was not an easy task and we are happy with what we have achieved in this short period. We would have loved to create the experience for the entirety of the bridge, but due to time constraints this was not achievable.
Overall, I am really happy with my team and our application.

What was the most challenging part of your experience?

Firstly, learning a new software like Unity was a difficult ask. With the help of the professors and team mates I was able to learn the basics of the program to get it running.

Secondly, the project itself had a few challenges. As the model was to be dsesigned at real scale, we assumed there would be issues with image tracking. This turned out to be true, because we would need to move away from the image trigger as we explore the scene. So, we used a combination of plane tracking to negate this issue.