Final Reflection

• Development & Design Highlights

There are many design highlights in our MR experience that are worth mentioning. From a narrative perspective, our story is about the wounds carried by a person, a building, and an entire era. Rose, Rose, I Love You serves as the central thread connecting the whole experience. The story was inspired by an interview recorded by a journalist, in which Yao Lee shared memories from her youth. Her choice of words and tone allowed us to feel her unique personality, and we were deeply attracted by both her talent and character. As a result, our MR project became a story centered around Yao Lee herself. In the narration, we preserved many of her original quotes, which not only made the story feel more authentic, but also better reflected who she was as a person.

From the perspective of interaction design, we made many improvements compared to our earlier user tests. We added animations and interaction sounds to interactive objects in order to guide users more naturally into the story experience we envisioned. The entire MR experience is divided into several independent rooms, each representing a different chapter of the story. Outdoors, the user first discovers a rose, which begins the process of memory and recollection. The first room represents Yao Lee’s childhood. Here, we included interactive radios and vinyl records, allowing users to unlock records and change songs according to the progression of the story. This symbolizes Yao Lee creating her first famous song, “Mai Xiangsi.”

The second room takes place before Yao Lee entered the Yangtze Hotel. In this scene, we included an AI-generated model of Yao Lee, and interacting with objects triggers text annotations that provide additional historical context. At the end of this room, an invitation letter from the Yangtze Hotel appears, guiding users into the next chapter: the rise of the Shenbao newspaper and the opening of the hotel itself. As users walk down the corridor, they encounter historical photographs of the Yangtze Hotel. Along the way, songs created by Yao Lee gradually appear in the space together with textual annotations, helping the audience better understand the memories and cultural atmosphere of that era.

In front of the stage, we designed a “look-at trigger.” When users shift their perspective, they can see Yao Lee appear before them and unlock a video sequence through a camera placed within the environment. Combined with spatial 3D sound effects, this moment guides users into the ballroom on the left side. The ballroom is designed as a freer exploration space, matching the atmosphere of a real dance hall. However, we still subtly guide players toward key locations through the placement of roses. Users can observe conversations happening within the ballroom, gradually uncovering part of Yao Lee’s love story, and eventually collect all of the roses before reaching the ending of the experience. The ending features the real sheet music of “Rose, Rose, I Love You,” placed within the physical environment as a connection between reality and the MR space. Throughout the entire MR experience, we consciously focused on building an atmosphere that matched the emotional tone of the story: a complete narrative line, guided interactions at every step, and a musically expressive environment.

• Personal Experience

Honestly, this project taught me a huge amount. Building an MR experience from scratch was much harder than I originally imagined. We had to choose a direction ourselves, conduct historical research, and create a complete story. The story could not only be about a person — it also had to be about a building, about the relationship between a person and a building, and about Shanghai in the twentieth century. We looked through many interviews and historical materials related to Yao Lee in order to better understand her life and organize the overall narrative structure. Based on Yao Lee’s own words, I wrote the logic of the story and completed most of the narration script.

The more difficult part was the Unity production process, which was honestly a major struggle for us. None of the three people in our group were especially experienced with Unity, and MR was a completely new medium for all of us. We received a lot of technical help from Ian and Shenyang, and through this process I learned how to use templates to place triggers on different objects. At first I felt very unfamiliar with everything, but gradually I became more comfortable connecting different game objects in the scene through triggers and code. It became a really interesting process. My main responsibility was the Unity production, and through working on the project I became much more familiar with Unity itself, which felt very rewarding.

I also realized how important environmental sound and interaction design are in an MR experience. During the first user test, even though we already had many assets placed into the scene, the overall experience still felt weak because everything felt too empty and dry. As the professor pointed out, it felt more like a museum exhibition than an immersive MR experience. Later, we added more music, interaction guidance, and feedback systems, which made the entire project feel much richer and more alive. This made me realize how every small detail matters. Our MR experience was not simply about telling a story to the audience, but about allowing them to enter the experience themselves and personally feel these memories. Overall, I’m really grateful to our professors, my teammates, and also myself for helping bring the final project to this point.

• Suggestions for Improvements

My suggestion for this course would be to include more guided lessons and introductions to the basics of Unity. During this semester, we did not spend much class time on the actual Unity production process, and most of our learning relied on tutorial videos provided by the instructors and office hours. For students with little or no experience in Unity, this could still be quite challenging.

If there were more technical guidance throughout the course, I think it would also help team members who are mainly responsible for design and research better understand how to create gameplay ideas that are realistically achievable. It could also make the overall Unity production process much smoother and less overwhelming.