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The Enschede Weaving Factory project aims to showcase the conditions in which people worked during the 1920s-1930s in weaving factories. The project was started last year (2023-2024) by Andreas Ioannou, Kevin Nijkamp, and Trim Vezveja as a part of the IMT&S program providing our team with a solid starting point such as animated looming machine models, worker models, outside neighborhoods around factory and research. Based on that and the client’s needs we pinned the focus for our contribution on making the inside of the factory, in the end, our team is expected to develop a VR experience for MuseumFabriek, Enschede. The final product will be featured at the museum to give visitors a historically accurate and immersive view of working conditions during that time.
Our client, Rob Maas, works at the XRLab and is our primary point of communication with the MuseumFabriek’s curator and the project’s ultimate client, Edwin Plokker.
For this project, Saxion arranged a team of 10 students: 4 designers, 5 artists, and 1 engineer. Within the team, I worked as a designer, this role intended me to provide support to both team leads and the team itself. I was responsible for maintaining clear communication across the entire group, ensuring that all creative decisions aligned with the client’s expectations. Additionally, along with other designers I was tasked to maintain the historical accuracy of the project, ensuring that needed research was provided, and sound design and animations were correctly integrated into the game engine. (Might need to shift the learning goals priority from sound design to mocap)
| Name | Team Role | Specialties | Portfolio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carolina Bertoncello Machado | Team Lead Designer | Narrative Design, Level Design, Documentation | https://carolina-bertoncello-machado---game-des.webflow.io |
| Chris Peters | Artist | 3D Assets, Procedural Art, Unreal Engine | https://www.artstation.com/chrispeters99 |
| Faried Elawady | Team Lead Artist | Technical art, Asset creation, Project overview | https://www.artstation.com/premadness |
| Jelle Boelen | Engineer | Code, Tooling & Infrastructure | https://technicjelle.com |
| Julia Calis | Designer | Research, Storyboarding | https://juliacalis.wixsite.com/home |
| Nataliia Sviridenko | Team Lead Designer | Research & Narrative Design, Sound Design, Documentation | https://nataliia-sviridenko.webflow.io |
| Senne Oogink | Artist | Character Art, Rigging, Animation | https://www.artstation.com/senneoogink1 |
| Sorana Verzes | Artist | https://soranaverzes.artstation.com | |
| Stephanie Extercatte | Artist | Unreal Engine, general 3D art | https://www.artstation.com/temaeya |
| Wouter Meermans | Designer | Sound Design, Coding, UI/UX | https://wmeermans.netlify.app |
In the first phases of the project, we decided to settle for the design thinking research methodology to create structure and flow right at the start. The design thinking model consists of five stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. We began the Empathize stage by contacting the clients, Rob Maas and Edwin Plokker to better understand the problem statement and the desired outcome of the project. Once the project’s aim was in view, we began with the Define stage, which consisted of empathy maps, managing team roles, writing a MoSCoW model, and defining the scope. Moving forward, we got the team together to ideate concepts for the final deliverable, which we then filtered, voted on, and pitched to the client to decide our next steps. This consisted of prototyping, which proved challenging at certain points and caused delays in the development process. Lastly, there was the Testing stage, which consisted of a mixture of AB testing and normal feedback sessions with the target audience.
All of these stages will be described in detail throughout this devlog.
During the first week, the team held a meeting to learn each other’s strengths, interests, and aspirations for the project, and to have an idea of which direction to take it in. This was very useful in exploring our abilities and designating tasks. Based on that meeting I set my goals within the team.
We set up Notion as our planning tool and brainstormed ideas to pitch to our client for the final deliverable.
Another important meeting was held with our client, Rob Maas, to discuss the project, which has been ongoing for two years within IMT&S and ultimately aims towards creating a live scene of a weaving factory. He explained the use of VR and motion capture and the importance of keeping historical accuracy at the forefront of the experience. Since the project was started last year, we already knew what our client needed, however, some additional research regarding weaving factories from 1920-1930 had to be done.
This week focused on the empathize stage, beginning with a project kick-off lecture and establishing a foundation for our team.
On Monday, we met with the client, explored the project’s objectives, and aligned on professional interests and team roles. Based on that I was already setting draft learning goals that could align with the project, by the end of this week I had an idea of what knowledge I could get from it. By Friday, I had a team meeting to finalize work schedules and watched a lecture on deliverables and learning outcomes to ensure I was on track.
Another thing that was explored, was Notion. Previously I had no experience with it, so learning the basics of it provided me with new knowledge of team management tools. This tool helped our team organize information and links, track progress, document research, track learning goals, and maintain communication. I find this extremely helpful regarding my task management learning objective. Also, I pointed out the template feature, which worked as a great tool for team projects and report writing.
Alongside my fellow designer Carolina Bertoncello Machado, I dived into empathy map research. We analyzed the average museum age groups and defined at least three categories: school trips, which usually have early teenagers, roughly 10 - 15 years old - this is the biggest group; parents with their kids/ whose age varies from 5 to 16; elderly people with their grandchildren. To define which group would be our focus point, I researched VR age limits. According to Sony, VR sets are not specifically safe for kids below 12 years old (Digital Parenting Coach, 2023). Based on this combined information we calculated the average target audience - 15-year-olds, who are brought to the museum by either parents or school trips.
Empathy Map made by Nataliia Sviridenko and Carolina Bertoncello Machado.
This week I also started researching the weaving factories, specifically looking into working conditions, demographics, and dress codes. I found out what types of injuries can happen at the factory: “One of the most common injuries in weaving were pinched fingers from distracted workers. There were also incidents of weavers with long hair, mostly women, getting tangled in the warp and either having their scalp pulled away from the skull or losing large hair chunks.” (Education & Resources - National Women’s History Museum - NWHM, 2014). Because of that, women had to take safety actions and tie their hair as tight as possible, setting the dress code norm. Regarding demographics, I found old records of the average daily wage of weavers, this chart explained to me, that the majority of workers were men, who were expected to do heavy work while women were allowed to work on easier tasks. This knowledge allowed our team to establish the number of male and female workers within our factory digital experience.
Average daily wage of weavers performing different tasks.
After watching the Define Masterclass, we applied the "Value Proposition Model" to our concepts and pitched the ideas to Rob. Later, we visited the MuseumFabriek to deepen our understanding of the historical context. To provide our team with references I recorded every important information about machines and museum workers’ stories. These insides allowed our team to create several ideas, about what would we propose as our final product.
This week advanced both our conceptual development and technical preparations, moving us closer to designing a historically immersive experience.
During this week I introduced myself to the motion capture software and explored how to calibrate the suit, record movement, and export it for further mocap. Additionally, I helped a student from another project with recording a running animation loop. This experience gave me an idea of how to move with the suit and how to use it within the project.
Following Rob Maas’ and Edwin Plokker’s insights the team started the ideation process. All of us developed small ideas on how to create a memorable experience. My main focus was on developing empathetic narratives, so I pitched the concept of building an emotional connection between the player and the characters within the factory. To understand the harsh conditions for 1930s factories and learn how hard people had to work to earn for a living the viewer has to feel related to the story. Based on that I pitched the idea of an interactive story where the viewer tries on the role of a regular factory worker. I believed that to learn the harsh realities of that era, where workers often had to spend long hours in terrible conditions, players would need to experience these struggles firsthand.
To provide this experience, I pitched an interactive story in which the player tries out the role of an ordinary factory worker, learning and performing tasks such as charging machinery, completing quotas, and fixing equipment failures. This approach would allow players to experience the demanding pace and weight of the factory work. However, the feedback from my teammates highlighted development challenges, such as VR control limitations, and made me realize that my idea might overcomplicate the VR experience. After doing a short research on VR controls, I began exploring ways to simplify the interactions. The final idea proposal to the team included as few control interactions as possible, narrowing down to a single button and eyesight control systems.
By the end of week 1.1, we had ten concepts in mind, so the next step was to select the best of three that we could pitch to our client. As a team, we went through each idea and did a short SWOT analysis, excluding ones and combining others. By the end of the discussion, we narrowed it down to three “umbrella” concepts.
Once three concepts were set in stone I sketched out two of them to support our ideas in preparation for the client presentation.
Narrative guided tour concept.
Points of interest concept.
The third concept was sketched by Julia Calis. With both visual and document-based support, we presented our three “umbrella” concepts to Rob. He expressed enthusiasm for combining elements from all three, aiming to implement their strengths. Rob also suggested that a non-linear story structure would be more suitable for this project, expressing that the VR experience should stay within 3 minutes so more visitors can try it out. Additionally, he noted that it would be interesting to have some sort of a “guide” within the experience as it provides players with greater context and creates engagement with the story.
After this meeting, I sat down together with the team leads and discussed what parts of the concepts should be kept and what should be left out. As a team, we made a list of the pros and cons of each umbrella concept.
Pros and cons of each umbrella concept
While helping Carolina with the design document, I explored a unique design approach she shared with me: the three-pillar strategy. This method intends that each part of the project we are working on should refer to one of three milestones we are trying to reach.
Three Pillars:
This inside allowed me to improve my design thinking knowledge and will be useful in my future career, while also being extremely useful for our project progress.
After finalizing the concept I decided to move on to motion capture study. I watched tutorials from the official Movella website to understand how to correctly set up and how to link the Xsens suit to the software. Together with my fellow designer, we borrowed an Xsens Link suit from the XRLab. Following the instructions, we took measurements of each team member who was interested in acting. This way the team would get comfortable with using the suit. I was eager to learn how to both wear a suit and how to set it up, which allowed me to optimize the set-up time for myself. The team had some issues with the connection between the suit’s sensors and the router. Together with the Motion Capture Optimization team, we managed to figure out the solution and the setup was complete. The next step was calibration which went pretty smoothly and together with our team leads I was able to record several test movements and send them to our cleanup artist for their study process.
During week 1.2 I learned how to use the hardware of the Xsens Link suit, and during week 1.3 I was able to learn how to use the Xsens MVN program. With the help of Carolina Bertoncello Machado, I explored how to record movement, export recordings, and fix issues within the program. The process went smoothly as my teammate was always ready to give me some help. In addition, during week 1.3 I watched several tutorials on how to clean up the mocap recording. This knowledge hasn’t been applied to an actual recording yet, however, I believe it is a good start to at least understand the process.
During these two weeks, I was mainly working on my devlog as the layout of it was not completely transparent. To get a better understanding of what is expected from us, I went through the devlog template as well as assessed my fellow students who gathered some feedback from IMT&S teachers. As a result, the team came up with this structure of the document.
On the 8th of October of 2024, the team had our first gate presentation for the empathize and define phases. Overall, the presentation went smoothly and our team gained some constructive feedback. One of the remarkable questions was related to the time limits of VR experience. We were supposed to find out how to minimize the experience since our main target audience was big groups of students who wouldn’t want to wait for their turn for too long. To solve this question, the team has decided to divide the experience into short micro-stories (no longer than 30-45 seconds) that would switch once the user takes the VR set off. If the experience were to last around 3 minutes, this would present the user with an average of five stories to follow per experience.
After the gates presentation, the team decided to speed up the process of prototyping and improve the general production pipelines. To do this, together with Faried Elawady I created a team network graph that displays team member’s dependencies on one another regarding work, assets, etc. This gave the team an idea of who’s work is impacted or impeded by another member of the team, and who they should remain in constant contact with during the development of this project. Visualizing the flow of the production pipeline now gave the team a good view of the process in a different light than what we had previously.
This is a crucial step in defining the pipeline toward the project and estimating the timeline of the project overall. This enabled us to reduce the downtime of every team member as we were able to plan ahead. Another benefit was that this graph gave us a stronger overview of the upcoming tasks once we discussed the daily plan of action. This networking system allowed team members to communicate with each other instead of through the leads.
Team network graph made by Faried Elawady and Nataliia Sviridenko.