Users
Our users are…
- UNC students in courses about Buddhism and religion in Nepal taught by Professor Leve
- Students in these courses have experience using computers and navigating websites. Some students in these courses will also likely have had experience playing games on the computer and will be familiar with the navigation controls.
- Professor Leve who will use this model as an educational tool in her courses and oversee the maintenance of the model over time
- Professor Leve is familiar with using computers and will become more familiar with the navigation controls through her interactions with the developers and usage of the model over time.
- Individuals in the immediate Nepalese and Tibetan community who wish to learn more about their heritage and culture
- These users will span a wide range of ages and computer skill levels.
- Individuals who wish to use the model as an educational tool to generate interest in future generations
- These users will span a wide range of ages and computer skill levels.
- Individuals around the world who wish to learn more about Buddhism and religion in Nepal without having to travel there
- These users will span a wide range of ages and computer skill levels.
- Heritage activists who wish to preserve the tangible and intangible history of the site and inspire interest in others
- These users will span a wide range of ages and computer skill levels. Heritage activists who are interested in preserving history digitally will likely have more advanced computer skills.
- Developers/administrators who maintain the model over time. Developers are responsible for updating the annotations as appropriate and/or the model to be replaced with one(s) of higher resolution
- The developers are very familiar with using computers and likely have knowledge about the typical game controls that we use in the model.
User Documentation
We provide a tutorial page that instructs the user how to navigate the game (using WASD and ESC) and access the annotations. This popup shows up when the website is loaded and when the user clicks on the help button. This is to help the user know how to use the website if it is their first time visiting.
We provide a text blurb that stays at the bottom of the screen providing instruction on how to free the cursor from the game. This is important in case the user accidentally closes or doesn’t read the tutorial popup and is wondering why they cannot see their cursor.
In the initial instructions, we tell the user that there are annotations located throughout the model and to find the annotations in the menu on the right. This menu is indicated to users using a hamburger button which users must click to expand the full list of annotations. Users can expand the information for each annotation by clicking anywhere in the bar containing the number and title of the annotation. The ability to expand the annotation is indicated to users via the down carrot arrow and the ability to collapse is indicated via the up carrot arrow. Users are visually instructed to view an annotation using the “VIEW” button with a location symbol at the bottom of each annotation’s description.
Administrator/Developer Documentation
We will provide an instructional video for how to setup a GitHub account and gain access and ownership to the repository with the application code either through direct ownership or through a fork of the repository (ideally we will personally add the clients as owners to the repository)
We will provide instructions in the GitHub readme file on how to deploy the website locally (including dependencies and programs they need to download). In order to run the app and test new features locally, we will include instructions in the readme to run the frontend and the Unity model. Future developers can then test and deploy components and add annotations within the 3D model. Our team already has begun creating this readme file which makes it straightforward even for developers with no React or Unity experience.
We will include a video/written documentation for how to set up a Carolina Cloud Apps account for deployment; most of this information will be found in text form as part of the readme, but since some steps are more easily understood visually, we will include videos as well.
Thus, we will include a video showing how to deploy the application through Carolina Cloud Apps. We need to add administrators to our Carolina Cloud Apps application as administrators so that they can manage the deployment of the website. The website is deployed through Carolina Cloud Apps using the GitHub repository directly. Instructions for how to redeploy the application will be included as well.
We will provide a video showing administrators how to add annotations to the 3D model in Unity. Though the actual written text for annotations is found in a spreadsheet, the gameObjects for the camera position of each annotation can be confusing for the developers. Hence, we will walk through steps to add a new annotation and what exactly needs to be changed for the Unity script side.
We will also provide a video showing the administrators how to add annotations to the website through the React code and correctly link them to annotations in the 3D model. Included in these instructions will be an overview of each column in the spreadsheet where the annotations are located and how to properly save and import it to the React App.