Objectape is a playful AR measuring tool that reimagines 'banana for scale' by letting users measure the world through everyday objects instead of abstract units. Built in Unity, the project combines intuitive AR interactions, modular coding, and a whimsical object-selection system to make measurement both functional and delightful.
Designed the end-to-end user experience for an AR mobile app including concept development, interaction design, object-selection system UI, and functional Unity prototype. Collaborated closely with a development partner to balance whimsy with usability.
We asked ourselves — what if “banana for scale” became an actual tool? When units felt abstract, we start turning to the familiar and more relatable units — like buses (12 m), football fields (100 yds) and Manhattan (22.8 sq. miles).
March 30th, 2005: a photo of a banana placed against a TV set was posted on the blog Rockdogdesigns[7] with a description explaining the TV was for sale.
“Banana for Scale” meme had societal impact: People started measuring things in bananas when rulers weren't available.
Weather channel leverages AR to give you a contextually relevant understanding of current weather conditions in your immediate surroundings
Although intimidating because we had no prior AR dev experience, we bravely pressed forward with this concept!— but more importantly, we wanted to learn by doing, delight through play, and design with intuition.
We were really curious to see how AR apps actually come to life — so we teamed up to extend our Unity learning. With growing interest in AR/VR/XR for our future careers, this project was the perfect hands-on deep dive.
We focused on the AR fundamentals: keeping the UI simple, clear, and satisfying to use.
Objectape was inspired by games with simple mechanics and big charm — like Katamari Damacy, where rolling objects is joyful. Every element, visuals to code, was designed to play.
We had to be realistic! We were juggling core Unity Tutorials and other classes. Milestones were designed to be achievable and incremental in features we wanted - therefore a Crawl-Walk-Run layout.
Objectape 2-point touch capability and spawning of objects!
Those little dots are just visual confirmations that the camera is detecting valid planes to deploy points
The longer the measurement, longer objects are selected to maintain sense of scale
Using the wheel UI, user can change the theme of the objects to render.
