Summary:
Kaleidoscope was an immersive installation-based experience for the Askwith Kenner Global Languages and Cultures Room located in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. The experience explored how bias shapes perceptions and assumptions about race, identity, and culture within the student body at CMU.
2020 SXSW Student Innovation Finalist
Client:
Askwith Kenner Global Languages and Cultures Room, CMU
Platform and Technologies:
miXed Reality | 3-Projector Array | Volumetric Capture | HTC Vive | Unity
Development Cycle:
Four Month Project Semester
Developed by a team of six at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center.
The Experience:
Guests (single, or in a small group) are drawn into the space by a tranquil + rich soundscape accompanied by beautiful transient projections of the exhibit's past visitors. They progress through the experience by making a series of assumptions based on unique prompts about a previous visitor. Guests are then presented with an interactive visualization of where their assumptions differ from the truth.
The experience is designed to spark conversations in the student community about how race, gender, culture, and identity shape our perceptions of others and inherent bias towards them. The exhibit also increases the overall student-body involvement and awareness of the cutting edge immersive technologies available in the Kenner Room.
Kaleidoscope was also built to be expandable, allowing for the capture of future characters and prompts within the experience.
User Experience and flow blocked out in early concept phases of production.
User experience and emotional flow after several iterations.
UX and Game State mapping of a later stage of development.
Production & Design:
As co-producer and designer, I worked on a number of internal production and design resources that helped drive ideation of the story in early concept phases to refinements in the experience in later iterations & phases.
As a producer, I gained experience with project/phase planning, running dailies/team/client meetings, and managing workflow production pipelines with agile development + SCRUM. I also wrote an exhibit manual outlining how-to’s, maintenance and troubleshooting for the client.
As a designer, I wireframed + mapped UX/flow, conducting regular play-testing sessions which informed the design of each successive iteration through development.
You can discover more about Kaleidoscope here.