The Work This Week:
This week, we received some unfortunate news. After our Soft Opening, the faculty informed us that, given that we only have two weeks left this semester, it will be impossible for us to finish our software/prototype development to a point that it is truly clean and polished.
Of the many problems that came up at Softs, Kinect might have been the biggest culprit. It was clear that the platform was oversensitive, and faculty discussed how it made the experience confusing and sometimes even dizzy. There was also disappointment that the display that we have in place does not have an elegant, clean way of visualizing user information. Lastly, there was concern that it just wasn’t aesthetically pleasing – especially on the projected screen, the display looked flat with a lack of depth.
Yet, people still generally love the concept of this design, how it can connect members of the CMU community, and how beautiful it can be. So, the suggestion was that, for the last two weeks of the semester, we develop an animatic to showcase what this idea can be. This will basically be an ad pitch video that our client will be able to present to vendors and developers in the future.
When we spoke to our client later in the week, they were supportive of this new direction, as well as the work we did. They agreed that the cleaner it is, the better and that the key is that they need to be able to sell it once our semester is done.
To them, we had two goals when we started this semester. The first was the proof of concept and to them, that was a success because our ideation gave them a lot to think about as to what is possible in that space. The higher goal was to have fully functional software ready to take over content management, which could easily be customized. We didn’t quite reach this goal – we’re in the gap between ideation and functionality.
“This is not ready for the public yet, but the fact that we are at the point where we are tweaking the software and physical setup – this means that we have the concept right,” said Brian.
For our animatic/presentation, our client suggested that the pitch is:
- Self-explanatory
- Includes narration
- Covers future development
- Features the next step of intention
For the inclusion of backdrops, it was suggested that we switch from using pseudo-postcards that feature them to possibly utilizing a green screen effect, maybe on the wooden board that we’re planning to place next to the pillar. Either way, our client said that we should find a way to use the actual photos of CMU campus in the backdrop, rather than illustrations.
Lastly, our client wasn’t ready to make a firm commitment to ClearStory just yet, saying that there are more moving parts to that decision than just them, and that they have additional potential vendors they need to speak to as well.
By the end of the week, we had developed a script and structure for our video/animatic. We’re planning on focusing on the visualization/wall display aspect of the idea first, as that part of the design was the most troublesome. The video itself will cover some short snippets of the live space, explaining the concept, before showing what a potential user will do on the iPad and that in terms of interacting with the wall. This video will be 2D, but we are going to use some blur effects to give a feeling for depth for the visualization aspect of the experience.
Going Forward:
Next week will be the development and finalization of this video/animatic. Additional, we need to prepare our Finals presentation and also finalize our documentation. We have a draft of it that we presented during Softs and to our client, but additional elements, especially the technical aspects of it, need to be developed.