Co-lead: project management
Co-lead: UIUX design
NASA JSC onsite participant
Sept 2022 - May 2023
HoloLens 2
Figma
Unity
NASA SUITS, Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for Students, is an annual challenge that invites students to create new interpretations of what an augmented reality Heads-Up-Display (HUD) interface for astronauts on future NASA Artemis missions could look like.
Jessica Young, Ashley Fan, Michael Wang
Michael Lye
Bill Xi, Bryce Yao, Dan Luo, Dong Yoon Shin, Keya Shah, Linlin Yu, Pei-Jung Hsieh, Ryan Lee
Jamie Chen, Danielle Kim, George Xu, Martin Ma, Julius Beberman
How might we create an intuitive and clear spacesuit display that helps astronauts navigate and complete tasks on the moon?
Visual accessibility
Interface must account for extreme lighting conditions on the moon by enhancing and not obstructing field of vision.
Tactile accessibility
Special considerations must be held for tactile interactions due to limited hand mobility when wearing a spacesuit.
Visual clarity
Task clarity and visual hierarchy are high priority considerations, to minimize potential accidents.
Egress
Egress marks the beginning of the astronauts’ lunar journey. The interface should ensure proper sequencing and performance of procedures while minimizing risk for human error.
Navigation
This component should efficiently guide astronauts across the lunar site, carry out mission tasks at marked points of interest, and return back to the lander safely by closely monitoring terrain anomalies.
Rover Commanding
An astronaut should be able to intuitively and precisely direct the autonomous ROVER from its original location to a point of interest. There should also be a recall function.
Geological Sampling
Lunar rock sample information such as sample #, lithology, and timestamps, is collected by an astronaut using an RFID hand tool. The information collected is saved in a section of our interface.
✦ Palm menu [shown on right]: due to limited tactile mobility, we made the main menu accessible with a simpler motion–simply flip your hand.
For a clearer recording, in the [below] GIFs, the palm menu functions are being demonstrated by clicking on-screen buttons.
EVA menu opening
Accessing palm menu
✦ Procedures on task list turn green with a check mark once the UIA switch has been confirmed flipped.
✦ Before a user can progress to the next task, a confirmation of "proceed to procedure X of 9" appears.
✦ Task list's EVA information can be accessed at any time on the palm menu [shown in above GIF]
UIA panel layout
UIA switch toggle & interface response
Kelly Mann testing egress on-site
✦ Click rover command button to drop a rover point of interest. This will direct the rover to begin moving. [demonstrated on right GIF]
✦ Rover return button is found on the palm menu.
Rover on the move!
Dropping rover waypoint & self-centering
✦ Compass stays on top of user's field of vision. When compass isn't directly needed, it hovers slightly above the field of vision. When desired, a slight head tilt is all that is required to bring it into a direct line of sight.
✦ Placing a waypoint or hazard will mark that specific location on the map. [demonstrated on right GIF]
Placing a waypoint
Navigation main interface [compass on top]
Map buttons
✦ Enter or disengage geological sampling session through the palm menu.
✦ Sample rock data is collected using an RFID scanner [demonstrated on right GIF]
✦ To prevent accidentally ending a session, the user must confirm the session ending to return back to the navigation home screen.
Using RFID scanner on a sample rock
As the sole surviving member from the 2020-2022 design team, I had a few preliminary responsibilities before we started this year’s SUITS challenge:
Compile research & interviews
Analyze previous year's design
We interviewed specialists in pertinent fields such as astronauts, geological scientists, cartographers, XR specialists, and UIUX designers. These insights served as research starting points for our 2022-2023 challenge and helped determine what further research the team should conduct.
James H. Newman
Former NASA Astronaut
Steve Swanson
Retired NASA Astronaut
Jim Head
Geological Sciences
James Russell
Earth, Env, Planetary Sciences
Peter H. Schultz
Geological Sciences
Jonathan Levy
Cartographer
Isabel Torron
UX Designer
Alejandro Romero
VR/UX Specialist
Us co-leads divided the design team into 4 sub-teams, each corresponding to one of the 4 main design objectives: Egress, Navigation, Rover commanding, and Geological sampling. Each sub-team was responsible for the research, iteration, and design of their main design objective; however, all members cohesively worked together as one large team during meetings to share and combine ideas.
My main responsibilities as a co-lead consisted of managing design team meetings, overseeing interface and asset creation, and facilitating effective communication and collaboration between the design and development teams.
Iteration 1
✦ [Research] Discussed features and tested HoloLens capabilities. Reviewed the downfalls of 2020-2022’s design.
✦ Prototyped using MRTK2 provided toolkits.
Iteration 2
✦ [User testing #1] Modified interface to solve issues in visual readability and feature consolidation.
✦ Developed on the MRTK2 Unity API using Figma Bridge.
Iteration 3
✦ [User testing #2] Modified more features to improve accessibility and clarity even further.
✦ Discovered the downfalls of MRTK2 and its overall limitations.
Iteration 4
✦ [User testing #3] Created custom assets to further improve readability and contrast.
✦ Unity processing and latency improvements.
Iteration 5
✦ [HITL field testing #1] Tested if the color scheme worked well under lunar environments.
✦ Worked on issues with GPS system and the Telemetry Stream Server.
Iteration 6
✦ [HTIL field testing #2] Discovered key pain points of the existing prototypes: glitching, icon clarity, etc.
✦ Made sure the MVP could be delivered.
Initial user flows were created with 2 main ideas in mind:
✦ incorporating research insights found by sub-teams on what features were plausible to create and any current or new technology we could take inspiration from.
✦ iterating on which features to incorporate, based off of last year's testing results, NASA feature requirements, and prioritizing any additional features we deemed necessary or appropriate to include.
Egress
Navigation
Rover Commanding
Geological Sampling
Our whole team ideated together and came to a few initial design decisions:
Universal Functions
Functions shared across all screens (ex. compass, main menu) should be cohesive.
Hand triggers
To address the lack of tactile mobility, same actions should be triggered by the same hand movements.
Order of Operations
Our design should follow the given sequential order (egress first, etc) rather than being freeform.
✦ Interviewed 5 adults, aged 18-50.
✦ Tested on Figma desktop prototype mode with scripted interview questions.
Cheeny
Celebrado-Royer
Assistant Professor, RISD
Leah
Beeferman
Assistant Professor, RISD
Matthew
Bird
Senior Critic - RISD ID
Visibility contrast
Overall design needs higher color contrast and larger font sizes.
Icon clarity
Some icons were difficult to identify. Icons should look more cohesive.
Feature consolidation
Merge rover command feature into the navigation map screen.
Tests were conducted in pitch black with extreme light sources, on uneven terrain at two local parks.
Design-wise, we tested the accessibility of our interface [mainly color contrast & font size] in harsh lighting conditions and further edited our design to standard.
As challenge finalists, our RISD SUITS team was invited to Houston, TX to present and test our design at their JSC facilities.
Jessica Young (team co-lead, UIUX design)
Michael Wang (team co-lead, operations)
Linlin Yu (UIUX design)
Danielle Kim (development)
Martin Ma (development)
May 18 2023 - May 23 2023
(1 week)
NASA Johnson Space Center
Houston, TX
Our on-site testing was conducted at the JSC Rockyard, and our design was evaluated by Skye Ray. Testing was sectioned into three components: briefing, testing, and debriefing.
Our developers connecting our design to the Hololens & NASA's telemetry stream. The rest of our team members are briefing our evaluator, Skye Ray, on our design features.
Our design has successfully loaded in the Hololens! Team member Danielle Kim accompanies and guides our NASA evaluator through the egress procedure.
Using our navigational features, Skye Ray finds the geological sampling site. An RFID scanner [held in hand] is used to scan rocks and collect geological information.
Our evaluator then moves onto the rover command section. Here, he must direct the rover [in middle of photo] to and from the designated location using our interface.
Skye Ray debriefs general observations, pain points, and positives he came across while using our interface. We then use his valuable feedback for our next round of testing!
✦ Edited unclear icons.
✦ Created new buttons for newly added features.
✦ Added coordinates to bottom left of map to specify which point of interest is being clicked.
✦ Task progress bar added.
✦ “Loading” icons added.
✦ "Proceed to next step” display added.
✦ Revised sample information display.
✦ Created clearer scan completion indicator.
✦ Added confirmation for ending geological sampling session.
Our next on-site testing was also conducted at the JSC Rockyard. This time, our evaluator was Kelly Mann.
Our team briefs our new evaluator, Kelly Mann, on our design features. We also equipt him with our handmade high-beam lights hardware.
Our team member Danielle Kim teaches Kelly Mann the action that corresponds to our palm menu feature before testing begins.
Our evaluator flips a switch on the provided UIA panel. This action should instigate our interface to confirm and proceed in egress.
Kelly Mann drops a point of interest and asks the rover to maneuver towards it. The rover begins to move towards its destination.
Our team heads towards the debriefing site to meet up with Kelly Mann to listen to his feedback and discuss potential further revisions.
Photo Feature
Geological sampling would benefit from a way to store photos of samples.
Voice Note Recording
Implementing a voice note recording feature could be beneficial for navigation.
Asset differentiation
As Skye Ray pointed out, some haptic and visual assets looked too similar.
Intercom
For easier team communication between members during onsite testing.
Multi-disciplinary collaboration
Learning to work cohesively was as complex as it was fun. Coming together weekly to share ideas was exciting, as our diverse backgrounds brought many fresh ideas to the table.
Leadership
Co-leading was an unforgettable experience. I enjoyed learning how to facilitate weekly team work sessions, sharing design feedback, and just having a great time with my team!
Design: adding in redundancies
Sometimes your design won’t work as intended! We learned that implementing redundancies for functions is a great backup in case a function fails during testing.
Design: AR considerations
The interface spatially & visually presents itself differently on Figma than when seen in Hololens. It would be productive to implement HoloLens prototype testing earlier in the future.
Published 2020-2022 MIT Space CHI Paper
I was on the 2020-2022 SUITS team and wrote and proofread multiple sections. This paper proved significant in how we decided to proceed with certain UI features and UX interactions in the 2022-2023 SUITS challenge.
This paper was published and accepted into MIT Human-Computer Interaction Space Exploration conference.
2022-2023 NASA SUITS proposal
I, as well as the other co-leads Michael Wang and Ashley Fan, oversaw the creation of our project proposal. This includes researching, writing, guiding, and proofreading sections in this paper.
Our proposal was accepted by NASA and allowed our team to proceed in the challenge as finalists.
