Jiaqi Wu | UI/UX Designer
PHYSICS APP
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
Physics App is a project that aims at educating people with basic knowledge about special relativity. We are working in a team of 3 with the help of physic department of Carnegie Mellon University.
MY ROLE
UI/UX designer, visual designer
CONCEPT MAP
Our demographic is basically anyone from middle school to college who knows basic physics. And that essentially sets one of our biggest challenges. We referenced the learning curve of physics textbooks to build the user flow of our app. We hope to teach people theoretical knowledge through cartoonish videos. And then they would be directed to a digital experiment where they can test the theories they just learned. After that, they will be guided to a paradox that connects to the physical concept. Finally, they will be tested by an interesting game just to see how well they had mastered the concept.
USER INTERFACE
The biggest challenge for this set of UI design is that physics or relativity is too abstract a concept. And that makes it very hard to design an app that people would relate it to physics. I landed on space theme because most people would directly associate relativity to space since a lot of experiments happen in space. However, the truth is, relativity is really about everything including things we see every day. As an app that teaches people about physics, I don't want to be misleading.
Zooming in from space to earth
I have done a lot of research to try to find out the symbols that represent the physics the most. But I failed to find anything that's both commonly known and visually interesting. Essentially, physics is just too broad a topic, it includes almost everything. And that's when it hit me. Physic is everything. So I designed the interface as a zooming in view from space to earth. After we landed earth, the user would be going through a journey of physic.
HI-FI UI DESIGN
UI ANIMATION MOCK UP
ANIMATED VIDEOS
EXPERIMENTS
We have designed 3 different experiments for 3 different physic theories. This allows the player to use onboard sensor in the tablet to simulate the physic phenomenon that could not be experienced in real life.
Clock-displays two different time: the real time and the time when the user is in motion.
Speedometer- displays the hypothetical speed in real life given the speed of light value.
Speed of Light- the player can manually adjust the speed of light in the app.
Graph of Speed- generated according to the player's movement.
Time Dilation is a difference of elapsed time between two events as measured by observers either moving relative to each other or differently situated from a gravitational mass or masses.
In this experiment, we can change the value of the speed of light in order to experience the time difference.
Time Dilation
Scale- rotates according to the tablet's orientation, contracts in relationship to player's movement.
Speedometer- displays the hypothetical speed in real life given the speed of light value.
Speed of Light- the player can manually adjust the speed of light in the app.
Graph of Speed- generated according to the player's movement.
Length Contraction
Length contraction is the phenomenon of a decrease in length of an object as measured by an observer who is traveling at any non-zero velocity relative to the object.
In this experiment, under the low speed of light, we can experience the 3D scale contracts when the player is moving fast.
Generator-generates two balls at the same speed when tapping. One's speed will be affected by the player's movement while the other will not.
Speed of Light- the player can manually adjust the speed of light in the app.
Graph of Speed- generated according to the player's movement.
Simultaneity
Simultaneity is the property of two events happening at the same time in a frame of reference.
In this experiment, under the low speed of light, we can observe that the ball on the right will move slower when the player is moving faster.
Target- reacts when the ball reaches the target and locks down the timer.
To be continued...