Launched

It's been a pretty big week for us at HA. The SkyQ at the Space Needle project officially opened to the public. I guess the mayor and some other "big wigs" were there for the opening ceremony. Unfortunately I didn't make it in time to tell him to keep the Sonics in town.

There was a write up in the Seattle PI yesterday, and King 5 also covered it on the local news. It's a pretty satisfying feeling to see "real people" using the stations after many months of work.





The other notable launch was Redfin. Essentially Redfin gives people the ability to buy or sell a home over the Internet without the need for a real estate agent, which ultimately saves them money. They've built a model for buyers to shop for homes online, compare their prices to adjacent properties, check property taxes and sales histories, view large photos of homes, and then fill out standard sale documents.

We were responsible for a new identity and the look of the website, which they built out themselves. See their official press release for more info.

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

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.

Never Not Workin'

The biggest project I've ever worked on is slowly coming to an end, but it seems like I have an endless list of things that need tidying up. I have to say that I'm pretty proud of what we've been able to achieve, but I can't help but wish certain things could of been executed better (if we had more time, money, etc...). I'll be sure to post a more thorough explanation of what the project is after it's officially launched.

Here's a mysterious photo to get your mouth watering...


In other news, I received a treat in the mail today.

What could be better than a limited edition book about limited edition things?