This week (and I am not sure if it is week 12 or not because its that busy) was the week we had to come together get it done. Our group comes from the south and north coast so we had to make decisions quickly this week knowing our production and rehearsal time for the presentation would be limited together.
The Great Debate
Lady J and I met slightly earlier than the rest of the team and immediately went head to head on ideas. She is so creative and so capable and she was keen on doing the entire presentation as a video. This was extremely overwhelming for me because I was not so sure that my video section would be good enough and also because we would be preparing separately, comping it together which would have quality issues as well as content.
I had thought we would just use the slides as prompts an engage the audience with the interface as if they were the client. We had two strategies and we only needed about 8 minutes because we had the Scenario story board animation already upfront.
Once Chris and Somerset arrived we put it to a vote. I think Chris was as freaked out as I was at the prospect of doing it on our own at home and Somerset was happy to go with the flow.
We decided to do a bit of both and after some really exciting brainstorming we had almost too many ideas. At one point Jess was going to be live off campus 'IN A FIELD' and we would cut to her on location in the presentation. Thinking of ways to show the concept in engaging ways that involved the audience - (I guess you could say prototyping) was the first hour of our meet up.
Delegating
Undercover Boss conveys concerns
Projecting my hand onto my face - Far to close for my liking
Oli came to join us briefly and share his final concept which was great because we realised how far along he was and just how much we had to do. It was during his questions to Carolyn that we found a definite way forward. Oli had asked about the expectations of the presentation format and Carolyn was giving him examples (which included ideas our team had had about projecting onto screens like a gallery). This had always been part of the plan but became our focus for the rest of the session. Of course demonstrating the projection in the space to the class was going to be the ideal way to let our audience understand the problem we were trying to solve.
Seeking to find memorable engagement for people viewing art was no different to our team trying to create memorable engagement for people watching our presentation.
Example of our broader concept
Earlier this week I had been investigating the new rebranding of the National Gallery of Art. I came across this powerful promotional video that supports and reiterates our idea that the space provided valuable/memorable/ emotional connections. You can also see towards the end how they talk about the art and experience being freely available to everybody. Of course they are talking about their iconic building and the heritage... but the message is the same. Accessibility and experience. See the short video here.
https://www.pentagram.com/work/national-gallery-of-art-2/story#32505
Getting down to business.
Lady J had organised for us to all bring in shirts so we could present as a more credible Brand on the day. She has access to a printing press. Our Team took the secondary comments from Carolyn and started problem solving with our space. Our earlier Makeshift walls created by the rolling cabinets had not been very successful and only allowed small dull spaces. Other teams were gathered in the room so we went next door and Chris found a way to create large whiteboards with the tables. With a little testing around the projections - Hilarity ensued and it could have been the chocolate bullets but I also think we were all extremely pumped for the possibility of creating these projections for our presentation.
Chris who had previously given the group a 4/5 (and we had never forgiven him) was not happy with the gaps and spent quite some time with the masking tape and paper, whilst our projection wizard miss J mapped our area and adjusted the digital canvas.
Branding in situ
How many Chris's does it take to present emblazon
Contemplating the gaps
I do not know what Somerset is doing?
Chris go low fi with the mask
Lady J starting to map the medium fidelity projection art
Sorting out the angles - no more gaps
Lady J in action
The animation - Somerset had completed the animation which was fantastic and he narrated it so well we decided to use him as the introduction - The scenario really did play a big part in conveying our idea and having written it so long ago - it was nice to see it told in such a lovely simple way. I suggested the last slide have some little black stars moving over them - but Somerset thought the actual 'stary night' by Van Gogh might be a more powerful image. It was quite a lot more work for him but it definitely looked good and provided some variety at the end. After viewing the end result we thought it would be good to simulate the experience in our own projections for the audience to unify the content.
The Report and other goings on!
I really did not want to present the report as a standard layout document - surely we could be more creative - I did float the idea with the team we could do it like a program - like the ones you get when visiting an exhibition - but really when I started to format the pages it just looked like another document. Unless we printed it would not be able to convey the idea. When looking at ideas for the presentation slides I thought about how we might show the information within frames on a wall (see below). There were plenty of stock photos out there we could use and credit. It was going to depend on the amount of content and Chris had done a fair amount of the reporting there were some statistics and areas I could see would be easy enough to turn into graphics. I was delegated the task of summarising the old report because it had been mine initially and I also did some further secondary research to help support the areas that I thought needed context. Oddly enough it is evident there is growing support and technological advances that show projection mapping is definitely coming our way - and our idea of combining it with an app service like Spotify might just one day be viable.
The Report started coming together and the Teams Chat was hectic over the next few days as everyone got busy, printing, making, editing etc. Chris decided he needed a clear slate for our report on Google docs because I kept highlighting areas in pink... Note: Chris can not tolerate colour in documents - especially Excel :). We were using Miro - Teams, Google Docs and in the ned we used Google slides for the presentation.
Miro board was still the place to comment and collaboration most effectively.
Placing our prototypes in order
here were plenty of stock photos out tere
Looking at content in more detail
Miss J was doing so well with the Out takes
First draft proposal of layouts
Lady J and I set about creating some merchandise. The Emblazon Branding worked really well. Lady J created a spinning logo for our introduction slides and I think it was Chris who came up with our tagline.
"Wherever you Art!"
Somerset also came to the party with our final call to action in the presentation.
"You bring the Art - We'll bring the world"
The night before!
The slides were done - The report was almost done and we decided on a teams live run through. Chris was going to confidently wing it with bullet points, I was going to memorise 3 sections and the others were pretty confident they could use some notes. It was the best thing we did because it exposed all our issues. What should go last and who should say what. What we were missing and more importantly how it flowed as a story around the human centred problem.
By morning the had almost completely changed in areas. It was a good strategy.
On another note
For this weeks Podcast recommendation I will suggest another Simon Sinek episode - these are not the only sources, however Brian Collins was a great source of inspiration for our analogy service apps like Spotify and twitter so it was interesting to hear hm talk about this space.
https://simonsinek.com/discover/episode-30-designing-the-future-with-brian-collins/
Undercover Boss in our Midst
In week one I asked Chris what he did - He had informed me that he was in "admin for student engagement". This was his first course in the masters and he was just "dipping his toes" he said.
This week we found out Chris is ACTUALLY "Deputy Director of Student Success".
I say - that makes him Undercover Boss
