Institute of Art Design + Technology
Dún Laoghaire
On Show 2020
Judy-Ann Engracio

Irish Women in STEM’ is an Augmented Reality mobile application that educates users about the Irish women in history who have contributed in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The app displays portraits of these women when the device is pointed at the target images and also showing a description for each female figure. A virtual button is also available for the users to interact with, making 3D AR objects appear. These objects move when the virtual button is triggered. However, some of them are made static for the purpose of viewing them up close by moving the device near the 3D object.

The project intended to offer an experience similar to visiting a gallery or exhibition by having the target images presented on the walls where users can walk around to view them.

The interface of the mobile application was created using Unity3D and Vuforia. A simple REST API was made using ExpressJS and Mongoosen to show the description about each woman. This API communicates with MongoDB where the information are stored and was launched in Heroku so that the information can be accessed online anywhere.

Although the design of the mobile application was unfinished, it performs the way it was expected. Overall, the project was challenging but also fascinating knowing that Augmented Reality has a lot of potential to change the way we learn things.