Living Liberia Batik

Wordbirds

Organic Tinkertoy

TicketTap

Shrimp Sauce

Drum Squad

SPI 2009

Living Liberia Batik

Imagination, Computation, and Expression Lab at Georgia Tech
Director: D. Fox Harrell, Ph.D.
Project: Digital memorial for the country of Liberia
Platform: Flash, LISP, PHP/SQL, DHTML

The Living Liberia Batik is part of an ongoing effort to bring awareness to the struggle of the Liberian people, who emerged from the wake of a devastating 13-year civil war. Working with the support of the Carter Center, the TRC of Liberia, and the members of the Liberian diaspora population here in Atlanta, we are beginning production on the system. Utilizing D. Fox Harrell's GRIOT generative language system, the narrative experience will maintain a cohesion and rhythm suitable to the content.

Fall 2009 was spent exploring the problem space. Using the TRC's published report as a starting point, we worked to understand some of the essential conflicts and needs of Liberia. In light of stakeholder anaylses (at one point we had over 30 stakeholder groups), we realized that the process of memorialization is as intensely personal as it is political. Our job is not to assign blame or accountability, but to show the level of devastation this civil war brought upon Liberia. Tracing its sources from the founding of Liberia to post-colonial ideals, into modern day political corruption and military opportunism, we decided to structure our narrative into three levels.

Level 0
• A space for mourning and reflection
• Users have an opportunity to select a stakeholder path
• Exploration and decisions made during this section will affect the rest of the experience

Level 1
• Further exploration of the conflict- representing sources from post-colonialism, and the content related to the stakeholder selected in Level 0
• Content (images, videos, text) housed in 'frames' (design elements such as flowers, maps, etc) and patterns
• Interaction with elements (patterns and frames) will 'set' the pieces into the batik and progress the user forward

Level 2
• Looking forward: content is progress-driven, optimistic, or otherwise future-thinking
• Content (images, videos, text) housed in 'frames' (design elements such as flowers, maps, etc) and patterns
• Interaction with elements (patterns and frames) will 'set' the pieces into the batik and progress the user forward

After the user completes the batik, he/she will have the opportunity to save their experience for the purpose of sharing with others, revisiting, or providing alternate experiences for other visitors to the site. Interaction choices, asset choices, and design choices will be stored via XML during the experience.

We are currently in the interaction design / development stage of this project. There are several design iterations for Level 0. Back-end development with the GRIOT server, further ActionScript development, asset gathering, and further conceptual/aesthetic iterations are the current tasks.

Wordbirds

LCC 6310: Computation as an Expressive Medium
Project: Create a literary engine.
Platform: Processing

Wordbirds is a conceptualization for a literary engine. Using birds as a model for movement, each word typed generates a unique bird. Birds of the same color and opposite gender can mate (black headed birds are male, gray headed birds are female), giving birth to a synonym of one of the parent birds' words. If neither of the parents is a substantial word (no participles, conjunctions, etc.), then the offspring is a clone of one of the parents. Birds live for 38 secods per character if they are words, 10 seconds per character otherwise. After mating, male birds age 170% and females live for a short duration. Try out different word combinations, typing sentences, using word themes, or jibberish.

Organic Tinkertoy

LCC 6310: Computation as an Expressive Medium
Project: Create a drawing tool.
Platform: Processing

Organic Tinkertoy is a drawing tool that uses dots and lines as the two main expressive elements. Lines have an organic ebb and flow, the dots pulse and grow over time. Connecting two dots more than once creates an interesting effect, as well as connecting one dot to itself repeatedly. Left click below to add dots, right click and drag to move dots. Delete clears the canvas.

TicketTap

CS 6750: Human-Computer Interaction
Project: Information Aggregation and Control
Platform: UX Design in Illustrator, Prototype in Flash, Animation in 3d Studio Max

TicketTap emerged out of an assignment for Intro to Human-Computer Interaction. The semester theme was information aggregation and control. The problem space we chose was the area past the security gate at airports. Information displays in this area are typically segregated and difficult to engage, offering little incentive for passengers to use these systems if not absolutely necessary. For this project, we researched current information display systems, airline traveler demographics, and engaged in user interviews and surveys. After several design iterations, we arrived at our final system design for TicketTap.

TicketTap Features:
• Uses airline ticket as access point for immediate flight-related information
• Allows exploration of airport concourse amenities and services via interactive map
• Uses quick gesture-pad controls for navigating menu-based system
• Gives directions from current position to terminal, with both text and visual fly-through
• Allows access to destination city information, events, and weather
• Designed for quick use and approachability

Shrimp Sauce Clothing

Client: Patrick Byrnes, Owner/Designer Shrimp Sauce Clothing
Project: Small business website, blog, and e-store.
Platform: Flash, DHTML, CSS, Javascript

http://www.Shrimp-Sauce.com

Drum Squad

Client: Drum Squad Productions via Gonzalaga LLC
Project: Flash site updates and renovations
Platform: Flash, DHTML, CSS, Javascript

http://www.drum-squad.com

SPI 2009

Client: Solar Power International 2009 via CI Marketing
Project: Summer-long banner ad campaign for SPI 2009
Platform: Flash, Photoshop