Catie Jo Pidel

PastMaster is an app designed to use 21st century technology to experience 19th and 20th century historical images. Stereoscopic images are one of the earliest forms of virtual reality. Using two cameras, photographer's take two slightly offset photos that, when viewed correctly, create a 3D effect. Previously, these images could only be experience through complicated viewing contraptions, but the rise of the classic ViewMaster toy made these images readily available to the public for the first time. A little girl in Nebraska could look up at the Eiffel Tower without ever leaving her living room, simply by advancing through ViewMaster's iconic image reels.

(Image credit: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Classic-Viewmaster.jpg) Using this as our inspiration, we set out to create an Android application that created this same effect. But instead of simply showing far away places, we wanted to allow people to experience immersive history. Wikimedia Commons has a vast collection of historical, stereoscopic images, but viewing them online doesn't give the same effect as seeing them through a stereoscopic image viewer. Therefore, we combined our app with Google's virtual reality viewer, Cardboard, to allow anyone with a smartphone to use their modern technology to experience imagery of the past.

We chose to go with the Google Cardboard for a number of reasons. First, being around only $25 per kit, it's one of the most accessible ways to experience virtual reality. Secondly, we were immediately struck by how similar its design is to the ViewMaster. It's intended use is quite similar (holding it up to your face, creating an immersive experience), and there's even a switch on the side that's used as a click--much the same way the ViewMaster's orange, side lever is used to advance through an image reel.

(Image credit: http://www.wearables.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/GC_p2.jpg)

Since your device is fully sealed inside the Cardboard viewer, finding a way to navigate through the app presented a number of design challenges. The user needed to be able to both navigate between images in an image reel, and also between separate image sets. Ultimately, we decided on the idea of using rotation as the primary means of navigation. The app consisted of a home screen with a series of cubes in various colors. These represented the image sets, and could be selected by rotating your gaze to stare at the desired cube (which then highlights as in the image above below).

We decided to move forward with this mechanism because of its similarity to Google Cardboard's app menu. When choosing between different cardboard applications, the user rotates their gaze, highlighting the item at the center of their gaze. This allows the user to select it by clicking the side trigger.

Within sets, we opted for the idea of physical rotation. Since each image takes the entire screen, subtle head rotations proved unintuitive--users would accidentally change the image, which was both frustrating and disorienting. Therefore, we made the rotation required to switch images much larger than we had for choosing between image reels.

Our app was developed for educational purposes, so we didn't end up putting it on the app store, but the short video below is intended to show the behavior of the app. Ideally, this app would be mounted inside the Google Cardboard, making for an immersive way to experience historical imagery.