LitePin

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LitePin is an interactive exhibit designed for the Martin Artquest gallery at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, TN. Exhibit curators were looking to refresh the transformative media station with a new set of engaging, creative designs made by a team of Belmont University design students. We worked closely with the panel throughout the research, storyboard pitching, testing, and implementation process.      

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The Martin Artquest gallery is an all ages section of the museum that primarily attracts families with children. There are several interactive stations in this exhibit with activities such as stop motion film, still life drawing, and painting. The transformative media section consists of a large projector, and a Microsoft Kinect motion tracking camera connected to a desktop PC. In all of the designs, 3-D kinetic movements are taken from the Microsoft Kinect camera to correspond with 2-D on screen visual responses in unique ways.

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Because the user-base consisted primarily of families, early on I focused on relatively simple ideas that people of all ages could walk up to and immediately understand, while being engaging enough to encourage users to interact with the exhibit for a reasonable amount of time. Another key component of the basic design was the potential for collaboration, meaning several users could use it at a time so that attendees would not have to wait in a line to participate in the station. Finally, it was crucially important to consider accessibility throughout the process, so that all users, including those with disabilities, can interact with the exhibit without compromising its usability.    

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My final design, LitePin, was heavily inspired by pin-art toys. The basic idea was that much like a pin-art toy, the primary mode of interaction is made by pressing against the screen, which in turn makes impressions against the pins. To make the exhibit a little bit more interesting, I added an additional variable, the Liteball! The Liteball sits on top of the pins, and rolls around according to gravity. This leaves a trail of light in its way, which encourages users to create momentary art pieces in a unique way. Multiple users can create impressions against the pins at once, which encourages collaboration.

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This project was made in Unity and demonstrated skills in accessibility design, storyboard pitching and effective communication with a design panel.