Within a multi-discipline team of experts the process of collaboration relies on a strong and mutual shared vision. We were all keen to create the most effective user experience we could within the constraints of the budget and our own time. Together we identified areas for compromise and means for sharing our knowledge.The shared vision was to deliver an experience which worked in three different contexts but could share the underlying model. Foundational to each experience was the ability for the user to see the church grow around them and to walk through and see the interior elements in full scale as if they were inside.Parallel streams of research were identified :

  1. a technical stream to evaluate which set of technologies to use to deliver the best experience 
  2. An art history stream to find reference images, textures and evidence to direct how the church should be rendered 
  3. A model conversion stream to take the point cloud model previously created and reduce it to a size and format suitable for mobile

To bring the research threads together we created an overview specification document and developed a means to iteratively refine the model making tough decisions to constrain the ambitions to minimize the time on rework. For example we discussed including some more of the furniture and artworks, adding a background sound score and recreating the external view of the church so that you could walk outside and look back. 

We concentrated on the detail of the basic fabric of the church and through review meetings, annotated drawings and iteration we produced the rendered model.In addition to the model development the overall app experience design was developed in collaboration with the wider team so that feedback from onsite testing in the gallery and Florence could inform how users are instructed. 

Jo Reid, Calvium

Read more about how Calvium developed the project here and an account of Zubr’s involvement here.