In order to help Audi UK celebrate their 100 year anniversary at the 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed I helped produce a virtual wind tunnel to let visitors see how streamlined they are.

The virtual wind tunnel was phenomenally successful with constant queues of people waiting to play over the three day festival. Visitors would be shown a video showing how the drag coefficient of Audi vehicles has improved over the past 100 years. Then they could interact with the Streamliner to try and get their own drag coefficient as low as possible. Some people took the streamliner challenge very seriously – removing bags, hats and even sunglasses! There is a great video on Vimeo.

“With 100 years of Vorsprung durch Technik behind us, we had a lot to live up to! We wanted to make sure that we used the latest innovative technology to tell the brand story so far in an original way. Twofour came up with some great technologies to enable us to do this and have been an excellent addition to the project team here at Audi UK that have pulled this event together.” Jane Bown, Events and Internal Brand Manager for Audi UK

The interactive elements were all part of the Audi Experience (check out the video on Youtube), created with Twofour. The Audi Experience was a hi-octane mix of interactive experiential installations and live shows hosted by and including celebrities Sir Bobby Charlton, Ben Fogle and Audi racing drivers such as Allan McNish.The 2009 Festival of Speed attracted over 152,000 motor sport fans – the second highest Festival attendance ever and the spend in the on-site gift shop was up 100% on the previous year’s sales.

Role
Software project management, UX

Length
8 weeks. Completed in 2009

Team size
Creative Director, Project manager, Designer, 2xUX, 2xDevelopers, 2xInstall crew

Deliverable
Interactive wall

Design process
Interaction audit, competitor research, concepting, UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements

In order to help Audi UK celebrate their 100 year anniversary at the 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed I created six touch-screen kiosks filled with facts and figures about the last 100 years of Audi and a multiple choice quiz with a chance to win tickets to Le Mans and Old Trafford as prizes. The quiz was strictly for Audi fanatics only. Of the hundreds of people that entered, less than 50 people got enough correct answers to enter.

Role
Software project management, UX

Length
4 weeks. Completed in 2009

Team size
Creative Director, Project manager, Designer, UX, Developer, 2xInstall crew

Deliverable
6xKiosks

Design process
Interaction audit, competitor research, concepting, UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements

In order to help Audi UK celebrate their 100 year anniversary at the 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed I helped produce a holographic video screen displaying a timeline of Audi history spanning 100 years.

The holographic video screen allows users to explore the history of the Audi brand from its initial conception in 1909 through to the current day. Users wave their hands to scroll through the timeline and stop at points of interest which presented them with content relating to the Audi brand at that time. This was a Holopro projection screen which gave the user the impression that they were engaging with thin air.

With this event we had little control of the lighting and the flow of visitors. Consequently the developers had to create a piece of tracking software that was as flexible as possible so the install crew could quickly calibrate and adjust the tracking algorithm.

Role
Software project management, UX

Length
4 weeks. Completed in 2009

Team size
Creative Director, Project manager, 2xDesigners, 2xUX, Developer, 2xInstall crew

Deliverable
Gestural interface

Design process
Interaction audit, competitor research, concepting, UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements

Talking Statues was an interactive outdoor installation to celebrate the launch of Night at the Museum 2 on Blu-ray and DVD. Sitting side by side in Bond Street, Churchill and Roosevelt statues were brought to life, using live digital video effects and custom designed projection techniques.

Because the outdoor event was for one night only with no power supplies, a custom self contained projection system was designed that used portable batteries to run all of the technology.

Soundbytes from the script, written by Steve Coogan, could be triggered at any point, allowing TV presenters to interview the statues about their experiences. Churchill was particularly annoyed by the pigeons… It was a lot of fun, and a great event that attracted a lot of media attention and brought some of the wonder of Night at the Museum to life.

Role
Project management, UX

Length
2 weeks. Completed in 2009

Team size
Creative Director, Project manager, Designer, UX, 2xDevelopers, 3xInstall crew

Deliverable
PR stunt

Design process
Concepting, 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

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