Mirra AR/VR Experiences
Why is this project worthy of an award?
The promise of VR/AR/MR is to allow for people from all walks of life to create and explore places and spaces. Mirra is 3D content creation tool that enables people to create their own worlds and utilize their web browser as a content creator as opposed to cost prohibitive difficult to learn tools. Airlift was asked to help provide UI/UX guidance to help guide people through VR/AR/MR interactions as well as completely new 3D environments for people to place their images, sounds & 3D assets within. We explored and optimized environments for content creators to maximize their experiences with different types of content focus based on viewing angles & interaction models. Democratizing this technology is critical for the endless possibilities to be realized, with Airlift's help we are bringing this closer to reality.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Mirra is a design tool that allows anyone to create professional-quality AR and VR experiences – without 3D expertise and without code. No code no worries. As a Creator, use Mirra’s environments, components, and drag-and-drop functionality so you can focus on executing your vision. You won’t have to code, and you can build and view right in your browser. Create. As a Visitor, explore spaces that reveal something new with each turn. Pick up a new passion by touring someone else’s imagination. Creators have open-ended permission to teach, entice, and move us. Visitors are welcome to browse, linger, and fully immerse themselves. Build. Mirra’s drag-and-drop functionality makes it amazingly simple to build immersive experiences from scratch. Upload any of your own assets to make your experience your own, or use our library and market to help fill out your vision. For the first time, you can design multi-dimensional experiences filled with the sights, sounds, environments, and pathways you want. Share. Allow others to instantly jump into your experiences. Do some social sharing and invite anyone. Bring them into your classroom, store, presentation, or exhibit. Headsets provide the most immersive version, but anyone will be able to access your experience without additional equipment. Whatever route they take, every visitor can easily take advantage of what you’ve built in ways that weren’t possible before. Explore. Learn, discover, wander, feel. Be surprised by what you find. Move through content that surrounds you in every direction. Zoom from one space to the next. See what ideas look like on the inside. Expand. Find inspiration from other Creators and experiences. Get precise, dive into details, and trust the editing process to remain easy. Play around and get serious about executing your vision.
Who worked on the project?
Patrick Corrigan : Head of Creative Kevin Carr : Head of 3D Experiences Diana Povieng : Design Director Andrew Curione : Senior Designer Peter Synak : Senior Designer
View the project video: https://vimeo.com/270805958/e82b52f183
Mirror, Mirror
Company LUNAR / McKinsey Design
Introduction Date April 8, 2018
Project Website
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Mirror, mirror on the wall, you’re the smartest mirror of all! Mirror, Mirror challenges the cosmetic meaning of a mirrored vanity by focusing on inner beauty to promote a healthy lifestyle. The one system appliance includes smart modes which encourage wellness through mood, skin and hydration modes . As our design team began to think about the furnishings and fixtures market, we discovered that most brands in this industry have low brand recognition and loyalty. That’s to say, when most consumers shop for the bathroom they choose a multitude of fixtures tied to numerous brands, lacking a cohesive look and feel. What if bathroom vanity systems came as an all-in-one appliance? We set out to design an industry-defining suite of products to create desirability and brand affinity for an industry with a notoriously low customer loyalty rate. Mirror, Mirror is a complete vanity system that includes a sink base, faucet, smart mat and mirror. The overall design is intended to feel unified and connected, through intersections and a continuous round profile. It’s soft delicate corners, edges, and details resemble the comfortability and approachability of furniture you might find in your home. A degree of modularity exists to cater to an owner’s personal preferences, including a table attachment, number of vanities per space, mat colors and sink finishes. The range of materials are inspired from recognizable ceramics, woods, metals and glass you would come to expect from hand-crafted home accessories and furnishings. Mirror, Mirror is a one system appliance that disrupts the current interior fixtures market by creating a holistic and refreshing experience that builds users overall trust and buy-in over time. The smart mirror includes a voice-activated AI and pairs with existing voice-controlled systems. There’s an intentional cross over between the digital and physical. For example, to change between hot and cold water temperatures the faucet includes a touch activated system. The mirror’s illuminating presence greets you in the morning and the evening. The built-in mat senses a body is using the vanity system and triggers the mirror technology. Another sensor tracks motion, so if a person walks into the bathroom the vanity’s lights turn on or off. In today’s digital landscape, privacy is paramount, particularly in the most private space— the bathroom. We took data protection into account by using topographical embedded sensors to recognize a user’s facial features through infrared technology vs. full-fledged cameras. The round-edged interactive-mirror lacks a defined edge to further enhance the importance of a fully immersive AR experience— it feels less like a mirror and more like a window to your health.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Mirror Mirror’s truly unique features lie in its user experience. The UI provides a familiar aesthetic that many users already enjoy within popular social media AR filters. To empathize with body image concerns, we developed the features of the UI to be purely positive. Our chosen features were meant to make the user feel more secure and inclusive. This is evident in the encouraging and playful phrasing we used in the various user interaction modes. Contrary to current mirrors, these modes are intended to inspire the user to promote an emotionally-positive image of themselves. Our hope is to start a new confidence revolution with a mirror that shifts the current beauty paradigm. Mirror, Mirror’s modes are mood, hydration and skin health . - Mood, displayed by the cloud icon, contributes to mental health portion and is the space where motivational messages appear. This feature is truly how Mirror, Mirror differentiates itself from other smart mirrors. The mirror reflects images of the self— good and bad. Mirror, Mirror provides a friendly interaction and greets users and encourages them to conduct positive self-talk by looking inward. - Hydration measures a person’s water intake and is identified with a raindrop icon. When a user scans the mirror’s icon for water, H2O levels appear and communicate hydration levels. This is completed through sensors in the mat. It might also encourage the user to intake water. - Skin Health is identified by a finger print icon and reminds a user for SPF protection and recommended supplements. The main goal here is for skin cancer prevention. The mirror might ask if you remembered sunscreen or remind you when to get an annual skin exam.
Who worked on the project?
Terence Kwan, Creative Lead Nick Ross, Creative Lead Kuen Chang, Sr. Creative Director Angela Sevilla, Designer Germain Verbrackel, Designer Mihoko Ouchi, Designer Loriana Mitchell, Marketing Communications
View the project video: https://vimeo.com/269759142
Modallab Sustainable Transportation Concept
Company Formation Design Group Inc
Introduction Date April 10, 2018
Project Website http://formationdesign.com/case.php?case=008_Tra_E-Path
Why is this project worthy of an award?
The Modallab Sustainable Transportation Concept is an infrastructure proposal with the goal of facilitating electrification of the North American (NA) rail network while providing the right-of-way for the electrical transmission infrastructure needed to access the large amount of wind energy in the center of the continent. This concept is designed to evolve the NA freight transportation system into a sustainable, efficient, and safe network. The primary challenge of the Modallab Sustainable Transportation Concept was to develop a plan to evolve NA freight transportation into a sustainable system that moves away from fossil fuels and toward more efficient renewable energy. A key aspect of the plan is to leverage improvements in technology and configuration to provide advantages beyond sustainability: implementation of this strategy would greatly increase public safety while also enhancing the economic performance of the rail system. The concept leverages an electrified rail network to provide an evolutionary pathway to fully autonomous intermodal rail service as well as a means to electrify commercial trucking. The autonomous rail vehicles/trailers carry their own electric drive train that powers the rear set of wheels. Four deployable, low-friction steel wheels carry the weight when on rails. Initially, autonomous rail vehicles/trailers would be towed on public roads for local delivery with conventional truck tractors. However, next-generation truck tractors could be developed to utilize the electromotive drive train in the rear of the trailer, and in doing so provide a more efficient form of motive power. This holistic overhaul to the NA freight system is the evolution needed to push toward a fully sustainable, efficient, and safe network. European main line rail is predominately electrified, offering substantial efficiencies over the diesel-powered NA rail network. This improvement has been estimated to make the European main line rail 2.5 times more efficient. In addition to energy efficiency, electrification allows renewable energy to be utilized to provide a drastic reduction in transportation-related CO2 production. The US Transportation Energy book states that rail freight uses approximately 1/10 the energy per pound required of trucking freight. Because of this, moving freight off of highways and onto the rails is of the utmost importance in improving efficiency. However, the delivery flexibility that trucking provides over rail makes it impractical to achieve substantially higher rail usage without rethinking how we access the rail network. Even with the efficiency gained through the use of intermodal methods, a train must be compiled into an assembly of coupled cars that is inherently inflexible from a scheduling and logistical standpoint. New developments in communications, sensing, and networking technologies could be applied to form an automated rail network that would fundamentally alter our notion of rail transit. Trains are currently very limited in their ability to avoid hazards, even though they are driven by people, and truck-related accidents on highways still claim numerous lives every year. A system to reduce the number of tractor trailers on the road would thus serve a major public good.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
The solution is innovative because it interweaves a number of separate design challenges (electrifying North American rail and truck transit, providing right-of-way for high power transmission lines throughout the wind energy rich central plains, and encouraging more truck traffic to convert to inherently more efficient rail networks) into a holistic transportation approach. The autonomous rail vehicles draw power from suspended catenary lines through a deployable pick-up assembly housed in the front of the vehicle. A relatively small battery pack would allow the carriage to move under its own power when entering or leaving the rails at intermodal yards. The rear tires of the carriage are powered via electric motor housed near the wheels. The suspension of the rear tires can vary their load carrying duty pneumatically. Two forward tires are used to steer the carriage when it is under its own power and to support the front end of the carriage as it awaits pickup by a tractor for local delivery. The four steel wheels are deployed when the carriage is over the rails and the tires are retracted to transfer the load from the tires to the steel wheels. One of the rear powered axles and only 2 of the 4 tires remain in contact with the rail, but only enough to provide sufficient traction for motion. The amount of weight on the tires is automatically modulated based on the need for traction. This mitigates the amount of friction loss induced by tires. This variable traction system would also accommodate regenerative and emergency braking. On tracks that approach a railroad crossing, the addition of a curb on the outer sides of the rails running a maximum train length before the crossing provides an additional means to stop a large group of carriages running in a close pack. In the event the lead carriage senses an object in the path after the gates are down, it would send a signal to all of the carriages in the caravan to begin emergency braking. This would drop all of the tires down into contact with the curb, thus providing a stopping distance comparable with a highway truck as opposed to a train. The autonomous carriages would negate the need to compile and break down trains at the switchyard. Intermodal yards can now be nothing more than a spur track and a parking lot. This would allow a vast increase in viable rail induction points with little investment in new infrastructure required of traditional trains. As carriages enter and leave the rail line at more numerous points, greater economic efficiency would occur because of improvements in timing and location. This would induce a financial incentive that would drastically reduce the amount of long-haul trucks on the highways, thus reducing the environmental cost and improving public safety. Together the benefits to the environment, public safety, and the economy merit further exploration of this and all similar concepts.
Who worked on the project?
Bob Henshaw- Concept Design, Suzuko Hisata-Graphic Design, Ben Bailey- Concept Visualization
View the project video:
Mood Roads
Company MullenLowe U.S.
Introduction Date January 19, 2017
Project Website
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Background: Acura is a presenting sponsor at the Sundance Film Festival, which champions those who develop alternative and innovative approaches to storytelling. It also provides a unique opportunity to engage Acura’s most premium luxury audience, making it the most coveted experiential event for our client. Acura’s mantra is Precision Crafted Performance, and its technology and innovations are created to be in complete service of the driver. At the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Acura asked us to bring that ideology to life. Inspired by Acura’s performance technology, how could we build an intuitive control experience, one that further closes the gap between man and machine, that was true to Acura’s independent and innovative spirit? The idea: Our idea was to breathe meaning into Acura’s tagline, “Precision Crafted Performance,” to show the world what it really feels like. We wanted to use our presence at Sundance and beyond to curate performances that bring the emotional benefits of Acura technology to life. We’d focus on the intuitive control Acura’s driver-centric technologies deliver by creating performances that are personalized and even controlled by our guests. Their presence, their movements, and even their states of mind would affect their experiences. Each guest stepped into the Mood Roads experience the same way, but each came into it with a different state of mind. One person just got off the slopes and was cold and excited. One person was going through some personal issues and arrived anxious and hesitant. This all factored into their personal journey down Mood Roads. With Mood Roads, we created an interaction model unlike any driving experience before it. Driving simulators typically have steering wheels, paddle shifters, and foot pedals, all things familiar to users from real cars. We stripped away those things, instead outfitting the user with 30 sensors measuring 24 different biometric data points, all of them creating a direct connection between the mind and mood of the user and the output they see, hear, and feel. The colors, the time of day, the movement, and the music were all controlled by the user’s emotional, cognitive, and physical input.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
When you’re driving a modern supercar like the Acura NSX, it is essentially collecting data input from the user through the car’s user interface, as well as data from the car’s many sensors, and translating that data into actions performed by the car as quickly as possible for the optimal driving experience. But the user doesn’t know all that, nor do they need to. All they need to know is that driving the NSX gives them an even better sense of control than when they’re driving a car with old-fashioned mechanical steering and controls. To tell the story of ultimate control through data, we wanted to create an experience that skipped over the car’s user interface, instead wiring the data from the mind and biometrics of the user straight into the experience. While this resulted in an almost overwhelming experience for the user, it also served to illustrate the complexities taking place behind the scenes of the NSX, all resulting in ultimate driver control and a response even faster than the driver’s intuition. Sundance presents the very best of innovative storytelling to a savvy audience of premium consumers, influencers, and media, making it the perfect event for an experience that uses a first-of-its-kind format for storytelling, one in which the user’s mind and mood become the plot. Everything is created not only for, but also by the user, thereby showcasing Acura as the category leader in driver-centric performance technology. Acura’s performance technologies create a direct connection between car and driver, providing smooth power transitions and supreme control. The result is a thrilling and emotional driving experience. This notion of control and the resulting emotion was the core inspiration for Mood Roads. As we move toward a future where driverless cars challenge the status quo, are we forgoing control and embracing apathy? Mood Roads directly challenges this assumption. Emotion is vital to the driving experience, and there is no better designer than the individual user when it comes to designing an experience that will have an emotional impact on them, and them alone.
Who worked on the project?
Agency Producer: Alli Taylor/Sasha Pace/Zack Williams Chief Creative Director: Mark Wenneker Composer: Keith Ruggiero Design Director: Florencio Zavala Executive Creative Director: Margaret Keene Group Creative Director: Jill Lin, Zach Watkins Creative Team: Natasha Hugeback (copywriter) Simon Steinhardt (copywriter) Creative Technology Director: Martin Pagh Ludvigsen Design: Michael Molinaro, Denzel Hill Digital Artist/Multimedia: Tool of North America: Peter Clark, Christopher Bjerre, Michael Rigly Director: GMUNK Editor: Ashish Sharma Music & Sound: Keith Ruggiero Producer: Chris Kalizewski, Chris Neff Project Manager: Masahana Kato, Kim Callahan Programmer: Spinifex/George P. Johnson Sound Designer: Keith Ruggiero Technical Producer: Spinifex/George P. Johnson
View the project video: https://vimeo.com/240893392/8dcab6aa8d
Moot - Democracy Redefined
Company Frontend.com
Introduction Date October 24, 2017
Project Website http://www.frontend.com/engage
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Recent political events have highlighted a deep disconnect between society and government. Internationally, people have taken to the streets to protest, or used their vote at the ballot box to voice their dissatisfaction with ‘the establishment’. The problem facing policymakers is no less challenging – with the breakdown of traditional media and the rise of ‘fake-news’, it’s harder than ever to communicate effectively with citizens resulting in a breakdown in civic dialogue and an erosion of trust in our public institutions. Frontend.com have been working with a collective comprised of Irish universities (IADT, NCAD, and the University of Limerick), along with EU, American, and Canadian policy labs/think-tanks to combat this problem; exploring ways to tackle populist, anti-government sentiment by improving communication between citizens and government. Our initial research confirmed our belief that citizens felt alienated by their public representatives; while conversely politicians felt unable to communicate their efforts effectively to the citizens they represent. THE CHALLENGE We set ourselves the challenge to explore how we might repair this rift; to help rebuild citizens’ trust in public bodies through more effective channels of communication; to provide new ways for citizens to express their thoughts and, on the flipside, for public representatives to be able to consume all these correspondences. Ultimately helping to reengage citizens with the political process by creating a new more effective political dialogue. THE MOOT PLATFORM Moot is a conceptual technology framework which seeks to open constructive dialogue between public representatives and the citizens they serve. For citizens, Moot offers direct access to public representatives via channels they are familiar with. Through a conversational UI, we use AI to clarify, categorize and frame citizen queries. Where appropriate, Moot can directly answer the individual’s question or challenge extreme views. Where the citizen wishes to connect with a public representative, Moot can allow them to select the correct representative and relay their input. The system groups messages of similar intent, enabling public representatives to reply to them collectively. Automated replies can be sent to future messages in this group, reducing the demands on their time and freeing them up to host more constructive conversations with their constituents. To contextualize what public representatives are hearing, Moot presents additional information such as trending media and poll results. Core to the concept is a feedback loop which sends citizens updates whenever their topic or idea is mentioned in parliament, reports, or legislation. TESTING To assess the concept, we conducted a pilot study with Cork County Council to understand the impact of providing citizens with updates on the effect of their engagement. Individuals who received updates after engaging with the council had a 32% more favorable view of the council than those who did not. They were also 19% more likely to believe they had an impact in society as a whole. These results are a positive indication that empowering citizen voices and demonstrating their impact can play a role in the restoration of trust in our public institutions once again.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
This concept, building on technological possibilities and existing solutions found around the world, was developed to help communicate design principles outlined in our white paper, 'Rules of Engagement'. These principles argue for civic tech platforms and governments to develop direct channels for citizens to communicate with their public institutions/representatives through. It challenges creators to focus relentlessly on disenfranchised citizens; working to create an environment and culture of interoperability and institutional trust among all of our society. Moot has been created through research with disenfranchised citizens, government officials & elected representatives, civic-tech experts, as well as AI and technology experts to ensure it is a feasible and useful solution. Various governments, international organisations, civic tech non-profits and even the civic engagement team at Facebook have engaged with the contents of this paper and, since launching, the concept has been widely recognised as an innovative solution with the potential to improve our societies.
Who worked on the project?
John Buckley, Frank Long, Henry Poskitt, Michelle Murphy, Aiden Kenny, Manasi Shetye, Frank Gaine, Andrew Newman, Mark McNally, Michelle Mulvey, Eoghan Dalton, Cormac Reidy, Andrea Beaumont, Jorge Caballero, Mariana Spangnvolo, David Galligan, Caroline Anderson
View the project video: https://vimeo.com/238782748
