Inspiration
After struggling to learn different facts with just basic flashcards or books in school, we decided there had to be a better way. The concept of a "mind palace" has been used in many pop culture contexts, including BBC's "Sherlock". Essentially, it connects ideas and facts to a geographical location to aid in memorization and retention. We decided to implement this using augmented reality, to create a digital mind palace.
What it does
HoloLearn overlays a digital flashcard set on to a physical object of the user's choice--for example, the living room couch. Whenever the user returns to this location, the flashcards will be there and the user will be able to use them normally. Then, when they go to take their World History test, it becomes easier to remember the facts they learned, as they are connected to a physical location.
How we built it
We used Unity to create the FlashCard Set scene. We then incorporated several different elements in this scene, and used different C# scripts to give the elements functionality. We wrote scripts to iterate through each card in the set, rotate the cards, anchor the sets to physical locations with spatial mapping, and handle Hololens gestures.
Challenges we ran into
We had a hard time incorporating the Hololens gestures and it took a lot of time to try and figure those out. Although we were not entirely successful, we hope to make the app fully functional in the near future. This was the main challenge we ran into, although we struggled a little bit with Unity at first.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Taking the initial step from creating objects to incorporating movement and user input was the most challenging part, and this was our first significant breakthrough. Being able to actually make something that appears on the Hololens and is interact-able is so cool.
What we learned
This was our first introduction to both Microsoft HoloLens Development and to Unity, so everything we did was truly a learning experience. From creating a GameObject in a scene to adding movement and action events, we have significantly increased our understanding of the field of augmented reality.
What's next for HoloLearn
Next, we want to be able to integrate the movements of the user in the augmented reality to the flashcards, so that our program can be properly implemented. In addition, we would like to add a function so that the user can both create new sets of flashcards and place them in any physical location on a surface. After this, given more time, we would want to experiment with user accounts so that each person who logged on would have their own personal flashcards saved.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.