Augmented Reality Experience for The National Museum of Egyptian Civilization
Role: AR Developer & DesignerWorked with Nexus Studios
Project was sponsored by Meta
The What?
Using SparkAR, the experience overlays digital information onto physical artifacts. When a visitor aligns their phone with an artifact, the app triggers an interactive overlay that shows the artifact in its original state, augmented with educational spotlights.
Visitors can tap these spotlights to learn more about each piece, with content available in both English and Arabic, enhancing accessibility and user engagement.
The How?The AR experience was built using SparkAR, leveraging a range of design and development tools including Typescript, visual scripting, Photoshop, Figma, and shaders. My primary contributions included:
- UX Design: Crafted user-friendly interfaces to ensure intuitive interactions, guiding visitors in aligning their phones correctly with each artifact and interacting with information overlays.
- Pipeline Visual Scripting: Designed and visually scripted pipelines to support the experience’s multi-language functionality, allowing seamless switching between English and Arabic content.
- Spotlight Animation and Placement: Developed spotlight animations and positioned them carefully on different parts of each artifact to provide engaging, informative touchpoints that enhance the user's understanding.
- Translation and Localization Support: As a native Egyptian Arabic speaker, I contributed to the translation and localization of content, ensuring cultural and linguistic accuracy for an authentic and inclusive experience.
- Shader Development: Utilized SparkSL to create custom shaders for the ‘Sphinx of King Amenemhat III’, enriching the visual presentation and ensuring optimal rendering quality for an immersive experience.
The Why?This AR experience was developed to bring ancient Egyptian artifacts to life in a way that bridges historical education and modern technology. By offering digital recreations of artifacts in their original states and embedding interactive educational elements, the project aims to deepen visitor engagement and make museum exhibits more accessible and informative. The dual-language support broadens its reach to both local and international audiences, and the use of AR ensures that the experience is captivating and educational.
Being part of this project holds special significance for me as an Egyptian, adding personal pride to my professional role. It is an honor to contribute to preserving and celebrating my heritage by helping make these culturally rich artifacts accessible to a modern audience. This project has great sentimental value and has been especially meaningful to me.