Creation of Change |
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By Maja Kuzmanovic, Bas Kamer, Keez Duyves
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Description:
The Creation of Change was a collaboration graduation project among three faculties: fashion design, interaction design and graphic design. It is initiated from fashion design and it involves de
veloping a digital trend book on cd-rom. With the forecasting cd-rom, we aim at informing and inspiring designers from various disciplines. The medium cd-rom gives the user the possibility to make his or her own story by "surfing" through our items and ta
les.
The concept offers much room for free interpretation of facts, but also demands much experiment and improvisation from all members of the team. Consequently, we aren't only developing an interactive product, but the whole project is based on constant comm
unication and interaction between the disciplines involved.
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Medium:
CD-ROM |
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How is it interactive?
Users switch between the stories and the worlds, following own interests and intuition, creating own story about the future. The "switching" between the items and story-lines should be tactile and natural. Therefore we developed a "sensitive" interface, w
here the user has to draw and push the icons (symbols for linked items).
The prototype shows the complex system of integrating different media into a structure of 5 stories, visualized in sometimes interactive animations with relevant text in between. The interaction within the animations should provide a stronger feeling abou
t the content (for example, one of the items deals with the chaos within todays cities, a chaotic way of interaction will let the user himself/herself 'feel' frustrated by this chaos).
Behind each animation there should be a background information field with interesting quotations, bibliography, references...but this is implemented only behind one animation as an example. The final outcome of the program, the so called 'Change' is not i
mplemented either. This is the part where the user's path through our stories influences a collage of "mystical" verses and associative images, which he or she can combine into an "visual poem" or, as we say, their own future story.
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Tools used:
Power-Mac 8500, Director, Premiere
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Narrative structure:
Totality of the concept is built out of two "worlds"; material, empirical world and spiritual world. Through these worlds, ten story lines are spread, connecting 33 different items.
The structure is built as a 'road-system' of a land. The user can chose to follow different paths:
- one story-line (as a guided tour through a land, a linear interactive movie)
- changing the story-lines (choosing for different highways)
- taking a side-line (b-roads where indicators show which highway the user could encounter)
- associations (excursions with a possibility for return to the previous site).
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Interface design:
Each item (33) has its own background (a texture) and each story-line has its own icon. Spiritual and material world have their own specific interface design. In the middle of the screen, there is the main animation, telling (showing) a story about the it
em (a big circle or a six-corner). Around the animation there are icons representing different story-lines or other narrative elements.
The spiritual interface is visualized in dynamic circles and can be activated by soft pushing the mouse button. The material interface (in the form of a six-corner) is dynamic only on user's action (he/she can drag, drop, turn and throw the icons). In bot
h interfaces, there is a multi-functional icon, that contains functions as help, repeat, quit...
One of the functions in this icon is also 'background-information'. By choosing this subject, the user enters in a movable textual environment - our sources, references, quotations and statements. Here the circles and six-corners disappear, so that only t
he background texture of an item remains (with a possibility to return to the last animation). When one decides to quit the program, he/she passes through 'the credits browser', a rotating wheel, where all disciplines used in the production are mentioned.
By clicking a particular discipline, name(s) 'float' into the middle of the screen and after a while they float away. By pressing the quit icon in the centre of the wheel, the user abandons the program.
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Philosophy:
The idea originates from our interest in the mutations of the society, which underlie the future evolution of design. We consider a design-dictation expiring in the future and hope that the user will be more involved in a design process. Information trans
fer from the designer to the consumer will become information exchange.
Forecasting was until now presented as a linear story, what allowed the dictation of few people over the changes in design. Non-linear of interactive story-telling should make forecasting more 'democratic'. People could chose pieces of stories they're int
erested in and bring more variation in the products in the future (make their own stories).
The forecasters are not dictators any more, but more something like 'foretellers' in the middle-ages: they bring bits and pieces of news important for a particular location of the (global) village, they entertain the people with their story-telling, but i
t's up to the people themselves make their own associations and connections to their own situations. The creators of the future stories are therefore not only the people gathering information and visualizing it, but also the people from public themselves.
The notion of the author and receiver is nowdays beginning to blur.
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