The Cyber Seaside is a 4×3 meter interactive floor that invites visitors to learn through fun and pull their ecological weight by playing four interactive games. The Cyber Seaside uses over 2GB of lifelike graphics taken directly from British beaches.
“We wanted to make the site more interactive so that our visitors can spend longer exploring, playing and discovering new things. The new Discovery Zone uses the latest technology and will be really lively, entertaining our visitors but also helping them find out more about penguin behaviour and marine pollution.” Elaine Lambert — Director, Living Coasts
Jump up and down on the enormous interactive floor to clean the beach full of virtual litter, stomp around fishing nets to uncover trapped animals, clean up an oil slick to release trapped penguins or fight against invading seaweed! Children love this exhibit as there is an instant interaction as things can happen under their feet even when they are standing still.
Role
Project management, UX, Design, Install
Length
3 months. Completed in 2008
Team size
Creative Director, Project manager, 2xDesigners, UX, 2xDevelopers, 2xInstall crew
Deliverable
Interactive floor
Design process
Interaction audit, concepting, UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements
The Penguin Academy kiosks at Living Coasts allow users to choose their own penguin to nurture, grow and teach skills to survive in the wild. Users learn through play about a penguins’ lifecycle of feeding, breeding and evading predators. Penguin fanatics can also play online, but can only get to a certain level of the game before they have to visit the Living Coasts attraction and enter a secret code to unlock the final levels.
“We really had a fantastic experience with HMC, the whole purpose was to come up with a concept that was lively, interactive, but that also taught our visitors about marine pollution issues and they’ve really managed to do that for us!” Elaine Lambert — Director, Living Coasts
Dwell time at Living Coasts has dramatically increased in the area at Living Coasts in which the Penguin Academy is situated. Hundreds of penguins are still competing for top spot on the leaderboards.
I also setup a Facebook page for one of Living Coasts’ penguins to support the online games. Bizarrely (I guess everyone wants to be friends with a Penguin) Ping at Living Coasts now has over has 1,000 friends on the account. Living Coasts use the Facebook site in a very clever way; telling people about special offers, inviting people to events and telling stories about how the other penguins are getting on.
Role
Project management, UX, Design, Development, Install
Length
3 months. Completed in 2008
Team size
Creative Director, Project manager, 2xDesigners, UX, 2xDevelopers, 2xInstall crew
Deliverable
3xKiosks, Web games, Facebook site
Design process
Interaction audit, concepting, UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements
The Driving Standards Agency management conferences are aimed at senior DSA managers to promote strategic thinking and define a vision for the future. In the past, these conferences lacked interactivity and engagement. To spice things up me and the team from HMC came up with the concept of ‘Diary Wheels’; A classic Mini Cooper, painted in the DSA’s colours. The car was gutted and pimped out with a plasma screen TV and custom built video diary software. Think of Kit from Knightrider but with a twist!
“The Diary Wheels concept was not only innovative and topical, but provided us with a new approach to gaining feedback from our staff in a humorous and engaging way” Diane Wragg, Internal Communications Manager, DSA
Once a user climbed inside the Diary Wheels the well known voice of Big Brother interrogated the delegates for a bit of Q&A fun. With all answers automatically recorded and edited overnight to be shown as vox-pops the next day (which received a huge round of applause), it proved to be the most successful way of finding out what really matters to DSA staff. At one point five DSA employees climbed into the Mini at once! For each conference over an hour of high quality feedback footage was filmed, edited and delivered to the DSA.
The Diary Wheels has since been around the country on tour. It has been particularly successful in engaging with the 18-24 demographic, an age range which the DSA traditionally had trouble receiving adequate feedback from.
Role
Software project management, UX, Install
Length
4 weeks. Completed in 2008
Team size
Creative Director, Project manager, Designer, UX, Developer, 2xInstall crew
Deliverable
Interactive Mini
Design process
Interaction audit, concepting, UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements
I programmed 32 touch reactive screens and turned them into the perfect live Q&A system for the Driving Standards Agency’s annual management conference.
The screens were developed to cope with multiple uses; voting, anonymous feedback, quizzes with scoring and submission of questions. This interactive was hugely successful and effective as it offered the DSA a non-intrusive feedback system which was great fun to use, over 90% of the delegates agreed that the interactive screens were useful.
Additionally this interactive included a live Q&A system which was displayed on a mammoth 20ft projection screen. DSA employees were able to anonymously ask questions to the Board of Directors about the company and these were answered in situ. Over 500 questions asked and 186 surveys about the event were completed; a massive increase on the previous year’s results.
Role
Project management, UX, Design, Development, Install
Length
8 weeks. Completed in 2008
Team size
Creative Director, Project manager, 2xDesigners, UX, 2xDevelopers, 4xInstall crew
Deliverable
20ft Q&A interface, 32xKiosks
Design process
Interaction audit, concepting, UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements
The Living Autopsy, created for BBC3’s Make My Body Younger programme, was filmed live in one take to build up the shock factor of the contributors. Each contributor was hooked up to a heart rate monitor. As the person’s heart beat faster and faster in real life the animations projected onto their chests beat faster and faster to match the heartbeat.
“Forget those NHS adverts, any young binge drinker should be made to watch this programme…” The Times
MRI scans and X-Rays were carried out on each contributor so that the projections on their chests would be anatomically accurate. The contributor’s body elements could be aged dynamically at any time, showing what the their heart looked like as it aged, or what their lungs looked like as they filled with smoke.
Role
Software project management, UX
Length
3 months of pre production then 1 weekend per TV programme. Completed in 2008
Team size
Creative Director, Project manager, Designer, UX, 2xDevelopers, 2xInstall crew
Deliverable
Live projection system, Heart rate monitoring system
Design process
Interaction audit, user testing, design refinements
Mould Me is part of the Purple Planet exhibition at Cadbury World. It features virtual chocolate technology and casting incredibly lifelike chocolate busts of visitors into a hall of fame.
Cadbury were finding that users wanted to take home images of their experience so the software was modified so that the user’s images could be sent to the gift shop. Here they could be printed onto t-shirts, mugs and keyrings. Due to the success of the Purple Planet interactives Cadburys reported that the spend in the gift shop went up by £2 a head, not bad when the attraction sees over 500,000 visitors a year.
Role
Software project management, UX
Length
1 month. Completed in 2008
Team size
Project manager, UX, 2xDevelopers, 2xInstall crew
Deliverable
Installation
Design process
User testing, design refinements
Angry House was an interactive, performance-based installation created for The Big Chill multi media festival. The house looked like a wooden, cute backyard playhouse, appearing innocent and calm. It sat in on a manicured piece of land, surrounded by trees. It had the appearance of innocence and calm. When no one was around, the house slept… all was quiet, except for the wind chimes hanging above the door.
“I enjoyed the enduring enthusiasm of the team as they helped me create my Angry House for the Big Chill Festival. When things got tough, the team pitched in with good humour and delivered creative software solutions under difficult circumstances.” David Bickerstaff — Artist & Founder, AtomicTV
But the house was sentient. It knew when someone approached and from what direction. Proximity sensors embedded in the front of the house, detected the distance and movement of visitors. As they got closer, the house stirred, getting angrier, it growled and the door banged from inside. Sometimes, a bright light shot out of the small windows, projecting shadowy figures onto the adjacent trees. The house appeared to be alive and active, attracting attention with its internal, flickering light and nightmarish chimes. The Angry House was always locked and visitors could never go in, but curious folk could always peer through the windows at the dark secret within… Needless to say when we finished the project in our warehouse, switched the lights out and turned the house on, none of us wanted to get close to it!
Role
Software project management, UX
Length
1 month. Completed in 2008
Team size
Project manager, UX, 2xDevelopers, 2xInstall crew
Deliverable
PR stunt
Design process
Concepting, user testing, design refinements
Hoyts is one of the largest cinema chains in Australasia with 450 screens across 40 Australian and 9 New Zealand cinema complexes.
I worked on a complete back and front end redesign which included a quick ticket module where users could view trailers and book and buy tickets from the homepage, competition systems, membership schemes and for Hoyts’ exclusive cinema screens such as La Première, Halfpipe and Xtremescreen users could book their own seating arrangements.
The site has since been redesigned but I’m pleased to see many of the user flows I orignially set out are still being used: http://www.hoyts.com.au/
Role
Project management, UX
Length
6 months. Completed in 2007
Team size
Creative Director, 2xProject managers, 3xDesigners, 2xUX, 5xDevelopers
Deliverable
Website
Design process
Interaction audit, competitor research, concepting, UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements
The Express Visual Check microsite is primarily a training tool for Volkswagen Retailer staff. As a user enters the site they are presented with an explorable landscape which includes a number of interactive areas. The ‘cut-up’ style of the interface is deliberate, compiling the key areas that are present within each Volkswagen Retailer across the UK in one succinct representation.
I designed the microsite to present otherwise dry information in an engaging and interesting way. Videos and animation are utlised heavily to catch a users attention and illustrate the training material. Users are encouraged to view every site section, but the order in which they do this is not through a prescribed linear route. This increases the number of return visitors as users dip in and out of the information they require.
Volkswagen Retailers nationwide have loved using this microsite to keep them up to date with current Volkswagen procedures. To see a copy of the site click here: http://www.demo.twofourdigital.net/evc/stub.html
Role
UX, design and development
Length
4 weeks. Completed in 2006
Team size
Project manager, 2xDesigners, UX, 2xDevelopers
Deliverable
Website
Design process
UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements
The Volkswagen Business Forum delivers consistent and coherent messages to the geographically dispersed Retail network and to staff at Head Office. Fortnightly broadcasts are filmed, edited and encoded. The video footage is backed up by facts, figures and graphics to achieve maximum impact and value as a communication tool, then streamed the following day to Retailers.
The site is secure and measurable – with online reports available to show how many people are accessing each area, who they are and when they are viewing. I managed the site and the production of the webchats, discussion forum, product launches and web broadcasts; this included building slides, synchronising video content to these slides and rigorous cross platform testing.
Role
Software project management, UX, design and development
Length
6 weeks. Then monthly broadcasts through 2004-06
Team size
2xProject managers, 2xDesigners, UX, 4xDevelopers
Deliverable
Extranet
Design process
UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements