I.E.E. is an interactive installation designed for Multi-Arts Pavilion mima’s Catenary Pathway. It allows people to feel the collision of nature and technology.
Public Interactive Installation - I.E.E.
Team planner, Design decision, UI/UX
Role
Date
2022
Client
Lake Macquarie City Council
Overview
I.E.E. is an interactive installation designed for MAP mima's Catenary Pathway. We wanted to simulate how humans receive information on the internet and eventually feel overloaded and visualise how their attention span saturates with the amount of information they receive on social media each day. It allows people to feel the collision of nature and technology while reflecting on the relationship between themselves and their surroundings.
About Our Client
Our client, Lake Macquarie City Council, has been working to establish Lake Macquarie as a location for emerging arts. They recognise that integrating relevant elements of design, art, and architecture can enhance an area's sense of community identity, enrich its culture, and thus generate economic benefits.
As Map mima is Australia's first permanent regional multimedia art gallery, Lake Macquarie City Council hopes to cement Lake Macquarie's position as a leading creative city through it. Jacqui Hemsley - Arts, Culture and Tourism Manager at Lake Macquarie City Council - says that MAP mima encourages the presentation of more contemporary art distinct from traditional venues. They want to showcase engaging and innovative works and public exhibitions for new visitors, thus creating a connection between arts, audience and location for visitors that cannot be established elsewhere.
Design Process
Define the Project
Project Theme — “Growth”
"Growth" is an extensive theme related to many fields such as technology, mathematics, science and engineering.
We understand that our client, Lake Macquarie City Council, has positioned The Multi-Arts Pavilion mima (MAP mima) as a platform for showcasing technology and emerging art. Interestingly, the beautiful natural surroundings of MAP mima were a stark contrast to this positioning. Our group wanted to emphasise this contrast and allow visitors to MAP mima to experience the collision of technology and nature simultaneously. At the same time MAP mima's recent visitor figures indicated that they wanted to attract more international visitors, so we decided to choose a theme that would resonate with people worldwide. After researching the literature, we decided on Information Overload as the design theme.
What is Information Overload?
Information overload, a term coined by Bertram Gross, the professor of Political Science at Hunter College. Bertram states that information overload happens when the amount of input to a system exceeds a certain value. There is likely to be a reduction in decision quality if the system or decision-maker has relatively limited cognitive processing capacity.
Target User - Persona
Ethan, 27 years old, Travel Blogger
“As a blogger, I have to keep up with internet trends in order to drive more engagement.”
Ethan is a travel blogger based in Sydney who loves nature but is also addicted to social media. As a travel blogger, his daily routine is to travel around the world and introduce it all to his social media follower. In his free time, Ethan has to keep up with all the hot news on the internet.
Problem Space
How can immersive and interactive technologies make people aware of information overload thus to regulate their emotion and physical condition?
Ideation
Brainstorming
Initial Chosen Concept
In the course of our literature research, Media theorist Franco Berardi's suggestion that "human attention has reached a pathological level of saturation" caught our attention. Thus, we decided to link the 'saturation' of attention to the 'saturation' of the LED Catenary Lights' colour. In addition, as we learned in our interview, most of the interviewees' daily sources of information are social media. Therefore, we wanted to use the LED Catenary Lights to represent how the saturation of each user's attention increases with the number of messages they receive on social media each day.
Inspiration:
Usability Testing
Three iterations were carried out, testing concept, user interface and light effects respectively.
Colour Pattern & Data Transmission
Final Concept
Information/ Emotion/Explosion (I.E.E.)
Why I.E.E.
I.E.E. provided an interactive light show for this audience. As the user collects information and finally triggers the rainbow explosion, the "brilliant high-tech light show" contrasts with the "stunning natural scenery" that surrounds it, allowing the user to be more impressed with our concept and to be reminded of the beauty of Lake Macquarie.
Overall Experience
The complete experience of I.E.E. lasts approximately 5 minutes. During this time, users can access the interactive interface at any time by scanning the QR code on the poster. The installation also allows the user to exit the experience at any time, as every interaction of the audience is recorded by Catenary Lights and they do not need to experience the whole thing to add their own touch to the light show.
In the future version, the maximum number of triggered explosions varies depending on the number of simultaneous interactions to ensure a relatively complete experience for each user.
