Design Space

Rain. The start point of my design.

Sydney rains a lot these days! The continuous raining keep reminding me a short video of an Chinese rock star I viewed on the Internet. In the video, it was raining heavily, and the rock star hold an big umbrella. Under the umbrella, her daughter was treading inside the water so happily. I guess anyone watching the video could feel her happiness even outside the screen. Her father was standing there watching her also with a happy smile.

This is a lovely scene, but triggered my thought if that the game of treading water was so interesting, when did we adults stop doing it? Maybe the quote is right.

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

I hope to create a simple interactive installation that every visitors could participate and play with it, not only children but also adults, enable our grown-up visitors who are busy of dealing with all kinds of trivialities of life could have a relaxing moment and release the children who are still living inside our hearts temporarily.

Initial Design Concept

The original design concept was to use electronic devices to simulate the ripple effect on the water surface when people step into it. People interact with the induction LED screens on the ground by walking. The purpose of this concept is to allow people of all ages to experience this “childhood” fun through technology.

Affordance

A sensor LED screen is installed on the ground to show the water surface after rain. When people walk on the “water surface”, as the user’s footsteps move, the screen will show a ripple effect under the user’s feet, accompanied by the background sound of rain, just like people walking in the rain. Other digital devices, such as LED lights, can also be installed above the ceiling, using light strips to simulate the effect of rain, allowing visitors to experience “digital rain” more immersively.

Inspirational works

Design Goal

Through the feeling and atmosphere of rain in nature, let adults have the same happiness as children.

Install electronic interactive devices in public places that people are used to, such as shopping supermarkets, squares, etc., to bring novel fun to people’s daily life.

Rediscover the joy of outdoor activities for people who have experienced “Lockdown” because of “COVID-19”, and strengthen the bond between people in physical world.

Design Constrains

Considering the requirements of the Assignment to use mobile phone as client to remote control another app running on the computer, I decided to iterate my concept to enable user experience the enjoyment of interactive installation using their figures instead of their feet.

Current
Design
Concept

Users could added colorful and dynamic circles on the remote screen through operating on their mobile phone. When their touch different points on their phone, the relative place on the remote screen will appear a new dynamic circles with a sound. If many people work together, a dynamic illustration and a background melody were created at the same time!

Affordance

Digital Screen in public place \ Introduction board with QR Code \ Mobile phone

Storyboard

Design Goal

Everyone could participate, children and adults can have fun and share a interesting moment together

Giving people a moment of relaxation in their hustle and bustle daily life

Making our city more playable, inclusive and vibrant

Increase bonds with community residents through participating interactive digital installation together and bring the public an interesting and innovative experience

Inspirational works

Implemented Place

The work could be implemented anywhere in public place with a digital screen as the server end, people who passing by or hanging around that place could use their mobile phone scanning QR code to open the client app, and by operating on the phone to control the content and sound emission of big screen.