Background
The goal of this media installation is to recapture the sense of history that was lost with the demolition of the past Rockerfeller University building. The touchscreen-based experience combines historical and current scientists, and to reflect diversity among scientists on campus.
The Design Process
The architecture of the interactive screen was decided first — it is designed to be circular, so we wanted the user interface design to support it’s organic, symmetrical form.
1. Depth Interaction on Z-Axis
There are four sorting methods that a person can search for a scientist — Sorted by their last name alphabetically, by their field specialty, by the year that they we hired by Rockerfeller University, and by the awards they have won.
We proposed two types of interaction methods as the user explores the scientists displayed on the screen – the first one as movement along the z-axis.
The following animations show how the z-axis interaction works – as a user selects a decade, the scientists travel through time on a z-axis. The direction of movement is determined by the decade that the user is traveling to.
Animation Exploration 1: Particles traveling from background to foreground
Animation Exploration 2: Particles traveling from foreground to background
2. Linear Interaction on XY-Axis
We proceeded with the xy-axis prototype, as the movement was simpler. The z-axis interaction felt a bit too much like traveling through space rather than browsing through categories.
We moved forward into production, prototyping with animation and programming. The following animation shows how the xy-axis interaction works.
Attracting Users to Interact
The final section to be developed was the attract screen. The scientist profiles are designed to look like floating particles, so we thought of designing the title to be formed by particles, eventually exploding and revealing a description of what the interactive is about.
Credits
Agency— C&G Partners
Role— Concepting, User Interface Design, Micro Interaction design