azurata / S.Naka

FUNverse is a location-sharing service that supports communication between students at Future University Hakodate. I have been involved both as the person who proposed the idea and as the technical lead.

The team has a mission to provide an online platform that enriches student life at Future University Hakodate. Based on that mission, I proposed the concept of turning university life into an MMORPG-like experience by visualizing the state of people, places, and activities on campus and creating opportunities for spontaneous interaction.

Through team discussions, we focused on the issue that students often do not know where their friends are on campus and need to contact them just to check. To address this, I planned a location-sharing service that helps students become aware of one another’s presence.

On the development side, I worked on a BLE beacon-based proximity detection PoC and backend implementation. For the BLE beacon PoC, I built a simple verification that detects whether a smartphone is near a specific beacon, and demonstrated it at a presentation event. For the backend, I implemented an API server using Express.js and SQLite. I also implemented user authentication integrated with Firebase Authentication, saving and retrieving user profiles, and storing self-location information recognized by the mobile app.

Goryokaku AR War is an AR shooting game prototype set in the real Goryokaku area. I proposed it as a way to help young visitors, such as students on school trips to Hakodate, become interested in a historical place.

It was developed over four months by a five-person team in a university course called Project Learning. The team consisted of a leader, a UI/UX designer, a 3D modeler, and two developers.

The product was built with Unity and Photon Unity Networking 2. We created a prototype in which multiple devices could join the same space and play a shooting game in an AR environment.

I was not directly involved in the Unity implementation; my role was project management and team leadership. I managed progress and reviewed deliverables based on whether the product fulfilled its purpose and whether its quality was good enough to show to others.

Within the limited timeframe, I made decisions about how far to build the product and which risks to accept, while creating an environment where members could focus on development. The project was presented at an internal project exhibition and at Agile PBL Festival 2024. The presentation slides from Agile PBL Festival are available here.

Through this experience, I learned that even in areas where I am not directly implementing, I can contribute to team outcomes by managing purpose, quality, and risk.

Moving Hachiko is an application built around the theme of future meetups. Instead of deciding an exact place and time, users move by relying only on the other person’s direction and distance, creating a meetup experience with an element of chance.

Moving Hachiko is a web application built around the theme of future meetups. It was developed by a five-person team over nine days for P2HACKS 2022, where it received the Cybozu Award.

Instead of the conventional approach of deciding a detailed place and time, the product aimed to create an experience where users move by relying only on the other person’s direction and distance. By not showing the exact position on a map, we aimed to create a meetup experience with an element of chance.

I served as the technical lead and mainly worked on the backend. Location information obtained through the browser Geolocation API was synchronized with Socket.IO, and the backend calculated direction and distance. Each device received only the other person’s direction and distance from itself, rather than the other person’s coordinates.

I also created shared documentation about the communication method and related technologies to support short-term team development.

FOIP is a service for communication in a virtual space modeled after Future University Hakodate. It recreates a familiar university environment online and aims to support interaction between participants.

I worked on the frontend implementation. Using React and TypeScript, I implemented UI behavior that allows users to communicate through the virtual space.

This project gave me an opportunity to think about how the context of a real place can be translated into a web-based experience. I focused not only on building features, but also on what users see and how they act within the interface.

I worked on embedded software design for ET Robocon. As team leader and designer, I organized the design and implementation direction for robot control software.

The main technologies were UML and C++. I used models to organize structure and behavior, making it easier for the team to share implementation decisions.

Through this experience, I learned that embedded software requires not only implementation skill but also the ability to design behavior under constraints. I also experienced the difficulty of leading a team while explaining design decisions clearly.