Good People

Finally, after many years, I'm happy to say that Adrien, Drew, Joe and I are working for the same company. We were finally able to bring Drew to HA Interactive, and I'm looking forward to working with him. Time for the takeover...

Speaking of good people, yesterday during lunch I ran into Graham Stinson outside of Cafe Umbria. Graham was a designer at Dual who I learned tremendous amount from. Congrats to him on girl #2 and I hope that you, Tony, and Paul are kicking ass at Ratio Interactive!

Lebron IV

My new favorite shoe, not including all the retros that have been coming out. I need all colorways.

SkyQ: Map Station

Here's a video of another one of the stations we did for Space Needle. It was focused on "extending the view" for Space Needle visitors to the neighborhoods of Seattle via photography, narration, videos, and articles.


SkyQ: Map Station on Vimeo

Cataloging

In case you haven't noticed, I enjoy cataloging my stuff. So I was happy to receive a preview issue of Antenna from Tony Gervino. Slated to launch officially this August, the preview issue serves as a “survival guide for smart people who realize that every buying decision is made better with more options.”

The magazine takes on an appropriate alphabetical based format, with each letter of the alphabet representing a topic, including A for Air Jordans, S for Skate Decks, and K for Kicks. Interspersed throughout the index are contextual articles and photographs, including one featuring Seattle's very own GOODS.






One probably questions the relevancy of a quarterly magazine on hyped products, especially with websites like Hypebeast, Uncrate, and Gizmodo updating us almost hourly on the latest gear and street wear trends. In order for the magazine to succeed, it seems almost necessary then, to take the approach of many new and existing magazines such as Dwell, Monocle, and Theme, who have chosen to offer supplemental or new content available through their web presence. Even if it was as simple as links to where you might be able to purchase the hundreds of featured items—this is a magazine for consumers afterall.

Nevertheless, there is something about physically thumbing through a magazine that appeals to me, and it's sheer scale for the release issue—estimated around 300 pages—will have a place on my bookshelf not so much as forecaster for what products might interest me, but as an archive of what was relevant to consumers then.

Zeitgeist Coffee

Dinner and non-work related work at Zeitgeist.


This morning coming off the viaduct, I saw this. See more instances of these great stickers on flickr.

SkyQ

For the past year or so, I've had the pleasure of working on a project for the Space Needle, a Seattle landmark. For me, this was one of those dream projects where I got to be involved with almost all types of design, including interactive, industrial, environmental, and even a little bit of identity.
The goal of the project was to extend the 360 degree view of Seattle for visitors by use of an engaging interactive experience. The interactive team which I am a part of, at Hornall Anderson here in Seattle, came up with five experiences.

HD Camera Station

camera and housing in the skunkworks shop
one of two HD cameras on the roof of the space needle
Users are able to control a broadcast quality (same kind they use for NFL games) HD camera mounted to the roof of the Space Needle. The video feed is sent to a 1080p LCD where they can zoom in REALLY close to things miles away. There are two camera stations, one facing North and the other South, with the ability to pan the cameras nearly 180 degrees. I'll post more pictures and a video of this in action later.

Map Station

my workspace
capitol hill neighborhood view
The first time we see the a built out station with final hardware
South facing station shows neighborhoods south of the Space Needle
international district history view

Adjacent to each of the Camera Stations are two Map Stations (four total). These provide a richer amount of information as to what you can see with the camera, as well as the things you can't see. Major Seattle neighborhoods are featured along with brief descriptions of things outside of metropolitan Seattle. The interface is built in Flash and it's hooked up to a centralized CMS using Django. It's also hooked up to a couple of live webcams, and we built a custom cloud generator that reads in an xml weather feed that determines the density, speed, and direction of clouds on the maps.

Voices of Seattle Station

Vignette Station Prototype on Vimeo
Early prototype
Space Needle employee watching vignettes of fellow Seattlites
first time viewing for some of my coworkers who weren't working on the project
This station consists of a 42 inch 1080p HD LCD, custom 42 inch touchscreen and two directional speakers mounted overhead (pictures below). We filmed real Seattlites in HD and asked what they loved about Seattle. I'll post a vid of the final version later.

360 degree Time-Lapse Station

SkyQ: Seattle 360 degree Panorama Time-Lapse on Vimeo
Jamie, Dan, Joe
the knob allows by-the-minute control of the time-lapse, the touchscreen allows people to jump around in the 24 hour period quickly

center console for controling time and pan
Twelve 10MP cameras mounted on the roof of the Space Needle took photos every minute for 24 hours to create this. Users can pan and control the time via a central touchscreen and knob.

360 degree Factoid Reveal

SkyQ: Seattle Factoid Reveal on Vimeo
prototype in the skunkworks shop
hand movement revealing illustration and factoid button about Boeing 747 underneath photo

Another panoramic station, but for this we commissioned illustrator James Jean to create a 360 degree panoramic illustration that, well, illustrates interesting facts about Seattle. Each of the five displays making up the station has a touchscreen and a camera mounted above it for motion detection. Users wave their hands over the screen to reveal James' illustration hidden underneath a regular photo of the Seattle skyline. Next to each of the dream-like illustrations are buttons that users can touch to find out what James is drawings are about.

The displays, touchscreens and camera controls are all hooked up to custom server enclosure via fiber optic cables to here:


Sound is output through these crazy directional speakers. This is the type of technology they use for crowd control when riots break out! They literally output a cone of sound. But we're using it to keep the ambient noise on the observation deck of the Space Needle to a minimum.


I'll post more pics and photos of the project as we put the finishing touches on the installation, but you can see the photos I took through the entire year long project at my flickr account or at Adrien's (our developer) account.

Crit Wall

Today was a really big day for me on the work front. This morning started off with a client meeting to get the final go ahead from their CEO about the design direction we've been developing. One of the great things about our office is that we have a dedicated "digital crit wall," which is really just six flat panel LCDs mounted to a wall in front of a bar table, run by a single computer. Here's a picture (screens blurred):



This setup does three things for us:

1. Display digital comps in a storyboard format. This has been invaluable when presenting any type of interactive process, such as a buy-flow on an e-commerce website, to people who aren't as savvy with the the internet


2. Comps are shown in an end-user resolution as opposed to using projectors. Additionally, color, size, and quality of image is less of an issue than it is with projectors.


3. Not only is it great for showing a progression of screens, the multiple monitors spread out along the wall allows for showing larger groups of people the same content in an end-user format.

It's been great to see HADW, a company traditionally known for their print, brand, and strategy work, to invest heavily in our team (the interactive team); from the people we hire, down to the way in which we show our work. I think it's paid off heavily in the quality of work that we've produced in last year, which I'll post about soon.

Caffe Umbria

Today Joe, Adrien and I went to Occidental Square to have lunch at Caffe Umbria. They have excellent coffee and great panini sandwiches. It's amazing how great a few quality ingredients toasted in bread tastes.





I also got a few toys for myself.

My Roots

Me in the village that my mother was born, in China.

Fetch