You Are Here

In Design Studio, the first project assigned to us was to create an interactive experience that
addressed the meaning of “you are here.” It was an open-ended assignment that raised many
questions. The goal for my project was to give users a unique interactive experience based on
gaining information about my family, friends, and people whom I have worked with and inspired
me along the way.
The phrase “you are here” can have different meanings. This allowed me to explore different
types of medium. I was fascinated about the use of social media and networking in 3-D physical
form and how people communicated with each other in today’s world of interaction.
concept:

I wanted to create an haptic experience to force the user to get away from the
computer. By going though this process, it led me to develop a 3-Dimentional object in space
that would project information about my life. The user can then access the database to reveal
information about my family, friends and people whom I worked with.
how it works:

The experience of navigating through the projection is similar to that of a touch
screen. You are in front of this object and this information at that moment of where I started from
and how I move through my process of work experiences to the current point of grad school. In
order to access information about a friend or family member, the user has to touch the
information, in this case a person in front of them to navigate. This would allow the user to move
through the past and present.
conclusion:

I had a tough time trying to wrap my head around dealing with such a complex
database. I learned that defining context for a project helps to clarify design decisions to help
move it forward. While I thought this was an interesting idea, not being able to build it and test it
was frustrating. In the end I would have changed my approach to creating a physical prototype
instead of a projection. I would never know whether or not it was successful. However, this
project forced me to think about designing experiences and complex databases.