This week, we have been refining our concept and preparing for Quarters Walkarounds.
Our Quarters presentation was today.

We received a lot of useful feedback and suggestions from our faculty.
Several people pointed out that we need to put a lot of thought into the content. The example content we show and the experience of the guests will be a big part of supporting why this installation should exist. We also need to think a lot more about what our target audience actually wants and needs to keep the content relevant.
Others questioned where all of the equipment and servers for running these installations is going to be. We will need to look into what plans exist for a tech closet.
They also gave recommendations of existing projects to look at and people to get in touch with.

Some of the most encouraging feedback were reactions to our idea of a virtual reality demo and our day-to-night transformation. VR is on the rise and will likely become a big player in architectural firms and other such groups who need to present material like ours; this is a great opportunity to push that. The day/night transformation also tells a powerful story. The experience can be very guest oriented and informative during the day, while turning into a playful student oriented experience after dark.

We’ve made arrangements with Lisa to gain access to prospective students and possibly a booth at the upcoming Homecoming event so that we can further our user research. Survey questions are in the works.
We also received a CAD model of the Welcome Center space. It will take some time to organize the components and convert it into something more usable, but it will mean a lot less guesswork than modeling the entire space from scratch.

The branding for our project and our team is complete. Now we’re free to focus entirely on the project at hand.

This week, we discussed our initial plans with our client and our faculty instructors.

Our concept for the space can be organized into three components:

• Social sitting areas with touchscreen kiosk tables.
  The tables would provide a comfortable place to explore the information heavy content about the university, while also creating a setting that facilitates discussion, Q&A, etc.
  This biggest concern with this portion of the design is the question of space. We will need to conduct some scale testing to see if furniture would have a negative impact on the traffic flow through the somewhat narrow space.
• Interactive projection art installation.
  This would be a part-time attraction, displayed only after the sun sets. The projected display could encompass the entire space, turning it into a visually and physically engaging experience.
  Content for this display could be generated by the students themselves, similar to the Randy Pausch Bridge. We can take advantage of this opportunity to showcase the content creators and the interdisciplinary strengths of the university.
• Interactive wall piece.
  This is the component that is still the most undefined.
  We know that we want to allow guests to interact with this part of the space. We also know that we want to integrate interesting technologies into it. Our team is intrigued by the idea of having multiple layers to the display, either by adding transparent screens or physical components. There have also been talks about integrating social media to add a “living” element to the space.

As we try to narrow down ideas for our “wall,” we have been looking at other existing installations and companies.

Quarters are next week, so we’ll be spending this time putting together the information we want to convey to the faculty, and preparing questions so we can get the most useful feedback we can. We’ll also be doing some research into the kind of hardware and supplies we might use for small-scale prototypes so that we can propose a rough budget for the semester.

We’ve done a lot of work on our team’s branding this week. Our logo is done, and drafts of our poster and half sheet are up for review. The final versions will be ready next week after gathering some feedback and making final adjustments.

We also had another meeting with Lisa, and presented our initial ideas about the types of installations we could create. She was especially excited about the idea of a day-to-night transformation of the experience. At night, when sunlight would not pose an issue, we would be able to take full advantage of projection and other lighting technologies to turn the space into an immersive artistic piece. We really love this idea too, so we will definitely be working it into our design!

Furthermore, this week provided several events where we met with professionals from the themed entertainment industry, who work on projects like ours on a regular basis. We’ve made some good contacts, been referred to some exciting technologies to think about (which has really gotten our creative juices flowing!), and gotten great advice for how to guide our design process.

Based on the talks we had with these guests, we decided to focus on two big questions we’d yet to ask ourselves:

1. What is the story this experience is telling?
2. Why do we care? / What does CMU mean to us?

We each came up with some answers to these questions. Over this next week, we’ll be using these considerations with the hardware and design ideas we’ve had thus far to generate some cohesive concepts for the experience as a whole.

The pace is picking up as we gain a greater sense of direction. By Quarters, we should have some promising early concepts to bounce off of the ETC faculty as well as our client.

This morning, we had our first in-person meeting with our client, Lisa Krieg. We gained valuable information about our project, a lot of which was not what we expected! The venue for the final installation will not be open until 2018, so our goal is not to create the finished product. Rather, our goal will be to generate new, exciting ideas for what this installation could be and create pre-visualizations, mock-ups, and prototypes accordingly to help the committee designing the space with their final decisions.

This new information changes what we set out to do, but not our ability to deliver. We’re excited about the possibilities we’ve been presented with. Now that we have a better understanding of the expectations, we will be coming up with new concepts and research.

Of course we can’t forget that two weeks from now, we will need the final version of all of our branding materials. These will also be a priority in the coming week.

It’s the first week of a new semester and a new project. The team is settling into their new workspaces and getting the important things sorted out. We’ve chosen a team name: Wall Walkers! We’ve also scheduled our core work hours, made first email contact with our client, and set up everything we need for our Scrum project management and workflow.

We look forward to meeting with our client, Lisa Krieg, in person. Next Monday is a holiday, so we’ll have a short week, but we’ll be launching into research and brainstorming mode!