Writing about Interactive

March 17, 2011

SXSW Interactive – An Internet Celebrity Wedding

To quote a friend of mine, “It’s like the internet exploded into the real world.”

It felt like a celebrity wedding, where all of the people you know from a distance (read: follow on Twitter) show up to say hi. Even all those distant “relatives” you thought you’d never see again are there. And they’re all having a drink with you.

In his article from a couple years ago, which was rightly mentioned in Chris Fahey’s Donahue App session, Robin Sloane posits that the future of media is events. Events enable collaboration and co-creation across diverse groups that come together because of a third object. It’s like the bridesmaid hooking up with one of the groom’s drunk college pals. Sometimes magic happens, or sometimes it’s best to leave it alone.

September 24, 2010

Designing the Story: KeyStone

For our Entrepreneurial Design class we were each inspired to form groups that shared a similar passion or interest as we do. Gene Lu, Chia-Wei Liu and I teamed up, with a shared interest in creating a project that would benefit senior citizens.

Research

We began researching the lifestyles of senior citizens in New York City, interviewing young people about their experiences with the elderly and visiting our local senior center to interview the director and check out some of the activities.

We defined the outcome of our research into a few key statements:

Seniors rely on their communities for more than just a place to live. They need to be an active part of a community – being social and engaged – to maintain a sense of belonging and purpose.

We came up with KeyStone, a website that connects senior citizens  to their local communities through an  online network of activities.

The core of the concept is that local organizations that have a senior citizen audience, such as senior centers, religious organizations or volunteer groups, can post activities on the site. Seniors benefit by seeing  an aggregated list of activities they’re interested in and the organizations benefit by reaching a focused community of users.

Design Decisions

We wanted seniors to feel like they are part of an online community that also exists in the real world. The website we designed serves mainly as a directory for offline events, and engages a senior’s social circle for the purpose of making plans.

In designing the website we took our users’ ages into consideration. We kept all of the type and images fairly large. To help us understand the flow of the experiences we created a site map and wireframes that informed the final design of the screens. We conducted paper prototyping to validate the workflows we designed.

Telling the Story

To quickly capture and communicate how the system works we created a user journey depicting Carol’s story as she goes about making plans one afternoon.

We captured our full process on a tumblr: http://nyfsc.tumblr.com/

September 22, 2010

ArtScope: An Exploration in App-Guided Museum Tours

We began by observing behavior at the Whitney Museum during its Biennial exhibit. Some key behaviors we observed:

Most visitors don’t come to the museum alone
Existing mobile devices at museums are either out of date or provide an awkward experience
Many visitors don’t have a deep knowledge of art, but come to the museum hoping to learn

We interviewed an art educator to find ways to use those principles to improve the experience of using an audio/visual tour at a museum. We wanted to focus on the connected experience of standing in front of a work of art, and tried to make the technology of the device disappear where possible. We made sure to include audio during moments where the visitor should be looking somewhere other than the screen, but included video and images where appropriate to communicate more information than would normally be given.

View our complete presentation with notes, sketches and key points. (PDF)
View a sample wireframe workflow. (PDF)
Flip through the designed screens. (PDF)

Wireframes of varying fidelity

July 24, 2010

The Glass House Conversations

Six students from SVA’s MFA in Interaction Design program are engaged with the Philip Johnson Glass House and the National Trust for Historic Preservation to create a space online for conversations between designers, architects, artists, writers, and community leaders. I worked on the project from beginning to end as student project manager. At other points, I was involved with the initial on-site immersion, research, project discovery, site map, and wireframes, and worked as a member of the core teams for design and development.

Liz Danzico and Jason Santa Maria were leaders and mentors for this project.

April 14, 2010

Field Trip

Field Trip describes the relationship between an object and its environment through six filters: microscopic, soil, plants, people, architecture and atmosphere. These levels are a simplified lens through which visitors can explore and begin to understand the complex urban ecosystem in which the High Line lives. A visitor will uncover tokens by interacting with specially tagged objects, revealing valuable sustainability tips and fun facts.

After using the app at the High Line our visitor walks away with a better understanding of the park and how she can lead a more sustainable lifestyle.

This project was created in a joint effort with Russ Maschmeyer and Michael Katayama.

March 9, 2010

New York Times Breakout App

Our solution is Breakout, an app that allows readers to create a bridge between the world around them and the news they read in the New York Times each day.

There’s a lot of news out there, and it becomes overwhelming for readers to keep up with it all. When readers become overwhelmed they lose interest and the New York Times loses readership. Breakout encourages a reader to move away from the browse model of reading only what is provided to her to a search model where she can find related news stories and background information about any topic in which she is interested.

How it Works

With Breakout, a reader can photograph stories in the New York Times and artifacts in the world around her to get more information about them from the NYTimes online. Over time, her account learns what she is interested in and will supply interesting and relevant content to her. Without any effort on the reader’s part, she can find a focus in the ever-expanding cloud of news content.

If the New York Times can better know its individual readers’ interests, it can offer targeted advertising to its vendors, thereby increasing revenue from advertising.

Breakout was conceptualized and presented in collaboration with Russ Maschmeyer and Stephanie Aaron.

March 9, 2010

Story Drifter

When a teacher uploads a lesson plan, the Story Drifter uses search algorithms to create a first draft concept map with key themes and ideas about the lesson and pulls related content from the internet to be displayed in the story. To supplement the automated process, a teacher can manually upload other important information like images, video, articles, key dates and historical artifacts.

The teacher is then able to move and shift the content as she sees fit. If two images ought to share a connection, she can create a link between them in the story.

With the story in place the lesson can begin. The teacher is able to drift among the different arms of the story to follow the dynamic conversation in her classroom. If a piece of the story is missing she can add it on the fly by quickly searching for and adding relevant content.

Our prototype shows the Story Drifter as it is meant for groups on a large-scale touchscreen, and the software can be adapted for smaller groups with access to only small screens.

The Story Drifter was created in collaboration with John Finley and Clint Beharry, using Apple Motion, Prezi and Flash to create the illusion of a large-scale touchscreen interaction.

February 4, 2010

NYC BigApps: NYC Visit Restaurant Finder

When presented with the challenge of designing an app to fit the specifications of the NYC BigApps competition, I chose to use the NYC Restaurant inspections data from the data mine and focused my app around the experience of visiting New York.

Instead of using a general restaurant finder, tourists can use the NYC Go sponsored app to find interesting restaurants recommended by locals. In a later version of the app, I intend to make it possible for tourists to connect with locals to get more personalized advice.