A page with some of my earliest ideas. I was focused on exploring ways to branch the video into different directions, among other things. These ideas included exploring a miniature world made of LEGO using gaze cues, an endless maze, rooms filled with art installations, an exploration of memory/age by choosing videos with different camera heights, and participating in conversations via head gestures.
At this point, I only really knew 360 videos as a way to experience tours. Here, you can snap a finger to temporarily highlight points of interest in the video and bring up annotations by gazing at them.
Returning to the idea of branching, I thought about how gaze could be used to passively decide how to branch the video. Seamless integration of the branching videos seemed challenging without recording my own videos though.
A 360 degree video livestream where the user controls a robot using Leap Motion. The person would be far removed from the robot's location allowing them to interact with other people without them knowing the context. I thought the experience would be especially enjoyable with groups of children. It is at this point that I tried starting to think more about the actual experience of the video.
A video where the camera is in an alley, hallway, or corridor. Depending on the viewer's gaze, the flow of time changes. Looking forward in the video plays it normally whereas spinning around and looking backwards reverses the flow of time. Looking orthogonal to the corridor stops time completely.
Returning to the idea of branching once more: a refinement of the earlier conversation idea. By answering yes, no, or remaining silent, the video story/narrative branches much like a choose-your-own adventure along the lines of the Telltale games. Characters react differently based on your responses.
This idea was inspired by a haunted house I entered on Halloween Day where there was a maze in which every room looked exactly the same. It was extremely disorienting and the premise of the house was that there was a psycho clown in the maze with you trying to find you. Aural and visual effects served to further disorient the player, such as spooky music and flickering lights. Another take on branching via gaze (look at the door you want to proceed through), this idea was intended to evoke fear from the viewer.
Inspired by the Roll-a-Ball tutorial in Unity, I wondered if maybe rolling the ball to the physical location where a user wanted to proceed next, using head tilting gestures, could be interesting.
Returning to the tour videos, this idea was focused more on a tour guide rather than a tourist. The guide can pause the video and set highlighted annotations at specific timestamps and locations and use Speech-to-Text to fill them in. Tourists who watch the video after the fact are notified of annotations via a highlighted arrow that disappears upon the annotation coming into field of view.
Similar to the corridor idea, this idea plays with the flow of time. The direction the user faces controls the progress of the timelapse.
An idea that returns to the idea of using peripherals (in this case, Leap Motion). By moving their hands up and down like a conductor, they control the flow of a video of an orchestra. The user would control the beat, and the video would speed up or slow down accordingly.
Another tour idea, combined with live streaming. The holder of the 360 degree camera is the tour guide and guides the tour based on feedback/votes from the "tourists" in real time.