I started this project by just walking around the Hill Street area. It’s a place I go through a lot so knew where everything was but wanted to take my time to really think about the street. Being in the Cathedral Quarter, I was struck by Hill Street's blend of culture, arts, and history. I also thought about how it almost feels hidden, being a much tighter street than the rest of Belfast along with the roads that lead off it having lots of interesting places. From this, I thought an approach to this project that explored the tucked away and historical cultural nature of Hill Street would work well.
Another thing I considered when exploring Hill Street was the amount of tourists around that area. I’ve noticed recently just how many visitors are coming to Belfast now, but for what an interesting area Hill Street is, everyone just seems to gather around the Duke of York. Obviously, the Duke of York is a highlight of Hill Street but I feel there is a lot more around that area that should be of equal interest, such as the Dirty Onion. I think this relates well to my idea of exploring the tucked-away historical and cultural nature of Hill Street and making more points of interest for visitors.
To explore how this could be done, I began looking at other examples of digital touchpoints that were used to enrich areas of Belfast. One really interesting touchpoint I found was these AR tours created by YellowDesign. They have a few of these projects but I find the most interesting to be the Peace Wall and Titanic.
The AR peace wall is an experience where as you walk along the wall, an AR timeline is rendered and large panels slide out from the wall which document the history of the wall. What I find really effective about this is that it’s a way of adding information panels and digital touch points without having to fundamentally change the area, which I feel would be really important for somewhere like Hill Street due to the unique aesthetics of the area.
Another of YelloDesign’s AR projects is for the Titanic, which renders a life-sized model of the Titanic in the slipway. This is really effective as it allows users to understand the scale and location of the ship. I think this could be a really interesting touchpoint for somewhere like Hill Street, especially with buildings like The Dirty Onion, which is the oldest building in Belfast. It is just a framework now, but a digital touchpoint could be introduced that renders what the building looked like in its prime.
What I think is important for a place like Hill Street when introducing digital touchpoints is to keep them light and not overwhelm the user with a massive long tour of the area. I think these AR experiences would work best being short, engaging experiences dotted around Hill Street, so that the user isn’t being overwhelmed by long museum-like experiences. To achieve this, I think having some sort of physical touchpoint to indicate where these experiences are would be important and something I want to look into.
I knew I needed a way to indicate and start the AR experiences in the actual street, so initially thought of QR codes. My idea was to have nicely designed physical QR codes which would fit the brand and aesthetic of the street. When walking down Hill Street again, I noticed how there were already a lot of QR codes around the place, so thought there may be a better option to differentiate from what was already there. I discussed this with my tutor and NFC chips were suggested, as this would allow for more unique designs of the physical touchpoints. This led me to another idea which was to have the NFC chips within the bricks of Hill Street. Hill Street is such a brick-heavy place so this would be a really nice way of tying in the fundamental architecture of the Street.
After discussing with my tutor, I arrived at the idea of using AR experiences as my digital touchpoints, for example, users good see what Hill Street looked like in the past, find out information through AR-rendered information panels, and listen to audio about Hill Street. These touchpoints would be accessed through an app which can be used to scan points of interest around Hill Street. I initially thought of using QR codes to highlight these points of interest, however, I came to the idea of having the start points of the AR experiences as NFC chips within the bricks of Hill Street. Due to the amount of brickwork on Hill Street, I thought this would be a good motif for the brand and touchpoints. Select bricks around Hill Street would have NFC chips drilled into them, and be designed or carved to signify this. Users then would be able to explore Hill Street and scan the bricks when they find them, to discover more about that specific part. There would also be potential here to explore this more and have it so that once a brick was scanned, it would check off on a list in the app, essentially making Hill Street as an experience where you are searching for hidden information. I felt this idea worked well and was really unique, so decided to continue with it for the project.
