This project for the VU in Amsterdam was to develop concepts for interactivity for their Intertainlab. This is a lab that consists of two rooms; one representing a museum and one representing a living room. This project was in its startup phase and there was no clear idea yet what they wanted. According to Bas this is a problem that arises a lot when working with new partners. Like we, at the TU/e involve users from the beginning of a project, Bas prefers to involve partners from the beginning of a project too. The reason is twofold.

On one hand it takes time, but it saves even more. After a two day brainstorm and prototyping session with Waag and VU employees three steady concepts were defined, presented and documented, already having the partners approval because they helped creating them. Whilst in a classic process Waag employees would have to generate ideas, create concepts and then pitch them with no guarantee that your partners like any of them. On the other hand you’re able to show each other how you work and what the possibilities are, increasing mutual understanding of what each others goal is.

The concepts that derived from this session are described on the projects website and the session is also captured in a small video that can be seen on Fablab’s Youtube channel and belowas well . I was involved in a game concept for a museum context where one user walks through the museum and is able to send snippets of a painting to a table elsewhere in the museum. At this table users have to put the snippet within a painting’s frame on the right position. When they have found the right position they can start typing words related to objects or scenes they see on this particular snippet. With this user generated content the database of what‘s shown on the paintings is updated.

After the session was done and all the concepts were presented I made an overview of technologies that could be used to built the first set of prototypes. This was implemented in the documentation of the project. The VU staff has selected one concept to be further developed by the Waag.

This post is tagged Concept Development, Ideation, internship, Prototyping