Project summary
Client: The Vancouver Art Gallery
Industry project at CDM. An interactive installation for an exhibition opening in late 2021. This project was developed remotely due to Covid-19.
Role: UX/UI Designer
Team:
Allyson He Zhong – Project Manager & UX Designer
Pieteke MacMahon – Software Developer
Farbod Tabaei – Concept Artist & Developer
Sooq Won – Video Producer
The Vancouver Art Gallery is in the process of developing the exhibition: The Imitation Game: Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. This exhibition offers a survey of the expanding use of Artificial Intelligence in the production of visual culture for the past fifty years.
Our team was tasked with designing and developing an interactive installation that will provide an introduction to the history of artificial intelligence. It will be located at the entrance of the exhibition and will act as a beacon for the show, giving visitors an entry into the world of artificial intelligence.
To read more about the remote design process and UX considerations take a look at the case study.
The installation is a living network of information that reacts to visitors as they approach. It is a touch less interactive projection on a 10m x 4m wall with interaction zone that allow for 4 visitors to interact at the same time. Visitors interact through gestures with the use of depth sensors. The space and interactions were designed for a post Covid-19 world were the safety requirements of the exhibition are not yet known. We took into account social distancing and minimized the amount of physical elements that would need to be cleaned.
We wanted to create an engaging and meaningful introduction to the world of AI in visual culture that shows key examples of work in each field that highlight how AI is all around us.
Once visitors point to a node it opens a new network that shows examples of AI used to create visual culture in that field, the specific AI technologies that connect different works and tech used to create them.
The examples network that forms when users interact forms randomly depending on where the node is opened. the connections between nodes highlight similar technologies used and the node sizes show the chronology, examples created in the past will appear smaller.
The network will form differently every time it is opened but always within a 1.5m diameter allowing the visitor to open every example and read about it. All the UI sizes were designed based on viewing distances, allowing users standing in different areas or walking by to get some information from the installation.