I remember myself at exactly 18 years watching this amazing film that made me love even more “computers”… better said “the innovation”. Im talking about the movie called The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest. It is a comedy, about a motley crew of Silicon Valley geeks beating all odds and obstacles in their quest to invent the next-generation computer.

Unexpectedly, one stunning image actually appears: The refined hologram computer that Andy’s squad unveils in the end is an astonishing tool of the future, with the beamed image simply manipulated by fingers touching it. Because the success fantasy surrounding this image is so dreadful and ridiculous, though, the full impact of the machine –something worth pondering — is cancelled out. Recommended movie!

This was the first time I saw or imagined something that later would be named Mixed Reality…. When we talk about Mixed reality as the words explain, we are talking about, two realities that are mixed. The digital world plus the physical world. As I mentioned in my post we are talking about “The Third Era of Computing”.

With Mixed Reality we introduce the term “Hologram” into the picture, which are objects made of light and sound (digital world), that appear in the world around you (Physical world) like they were real they respond to gaze, gestures and voice commands and can interact with real world surfaces. This was shown in this movie i mentioned…

New concept of “Design Process”

We stop thinking with the traditional 2D design process, and start sketching in 3D which can be done with 3D tools built for gaming or engineering, and lets be honest… this limits the design contributions of a team to those with 3D development background.

What does this shows to us?

The field of mixed reality design will change dramatically in the near future, this will allow designers to build imaginative environments and spaces, requiring a skill set more akin to architecture or psychology rather than traditional interface design. Ok… did i just write “psychology”? yes… check out this video and you can understand why …

Some prototyping tools you can use :

• Unity
• Mixed Reality Toolkit
• Mixed Reality Design Labs
• Microsoft Maquette

Before prototyping we need to understand that we can identify three types of Mixed Reality Apps.

• Enhanced Environment Apps

This type of Apps are the ones in which the contextual environment is “key”. For example, placing items in their environment, books, notes, understanding the weather in the room, etc.

• Blended Environment Apps

This type of Apps, are the ones that create a digital layer on top of the user´s space. The difference between this one and the Enhaced one is that the Blended may choose to transform part of the environment to better immerse the user in the app. For example, an app that can change the color of the walls.

• Immersive Environment Apps

This apps are the ones that are centered around an environment and changes completely the world the user is experiencing. This app, can disregard the user´s current environment and replace it entirely with one of its own. For example an app that can place you in a beach including sounds.

So its time to start building our first Hologram!

Happy coding!