Initial Proposal:
My initial aims were to provide an environment that merges the real and the virtual of social media, which arguably allows the human interaction that is slowly being lost through applications such as Facebook and Twitter, to make a reappearance into individuals’ lives. Another aim was to encourage participates to actively get involved in the idea of verbal discussions, highlighting aspects of co-creation and participant contributions to a network built on a foundation of human interactions.
What I set out to do:
My intentions were to produce an interactive environment based within a café setting. The emphasis of this environment was initially based on the social interactions between people through building on relationships and creating new ones. However, as the project began to develop this altered and refined further.
There were three points of experience I set out to achieve, the leading component was a conceptual coffee shop “Share” that includes the secondary component, an interactive touch table, that allows strangers to connect socially through common interests. This provides an alternative reality based environment with the applications of the digital available on the notions of online social media.
By merging these two elements in making a niche environment, participants are encouraged to share interests over a cup of coffee. From this, the final point of experience was to create a visualization of common interests coming together.
A prototype video of how the interface works as an interactive table. This is a demo version in the initial stages of production, constructed using macbook pro, webcam, processing and projector. The interactive buttons use alpha as a variable. With special thanks to Courtney Robinson and James Frankis for some assistance with the coding process.
The main interface for interactive table within café environment.
Technical and Production Considerations:
The nature of my project meant that I had to work with a number of programs, codes as well as hardware. These included:
Technical skills: ➢ Photoshop ➢ Illustrator ➢ After Effects ➢ Processing ➢ Flash ➢ Hardware compatibility ➢ Wood workshop
Codes: ➢ Processing ➢ As2 ➢ As3 ➢ Java
Exhibited
Featured within D&AD New Blood Exhibition London 2012, Spitalfields Market.
