Project Brief
“The Innovation Center facility expansion will create an additional 5000 square feet of open floor plan space. This new area will be dedicated to corporate-sponsored labs, where interdisciplinary teams of sponsor staff, students, faculty, and Innovation Center (IC) staff will collaborate on the research and design of physical and digital concepts. These teams will operate in a hybrid environment, combining in-person and remote work. Each project will have a dedicated space for individual work, meetings, and reviews with clients.” Our task was to design concepts that solved problems we would identify in the current space.
Client Research
Interviews were held with the faculty and students who use the Innovation Center to determine areas of improvement for us to focus on. One important aspect of the client’s concerns was appealing to corporate sponsors who would have workers use the Innovation Center. As for workers, having a professional feel to the work environment over an academic feel was a concern.
Competitive Research
While doing competitive research at the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship located at the Illinois Institute of Technology campus (IIT), I was struck by a walk through gallery display of student work at the entrance/exit of their space. My initial thought was to create a similar walk through display, however after further research I was inspired by a projection mapped art installation at SAIC. I wondered if an art installation could also be functional and dual-purposed as an informative display.
Initial Concepts
Prototyping/Assembly
These initial sketches helped inform the shape and hierarchy for key information to be displayed.
Drawing a full size mockup on a whiteboard determined the scale of the final based on how it would be interacted with.
Using foam core, I cut out the pieces and assembled them, tweaking the measurements manually.
Final Design
Using projection mapping and a hierarchal system of displays, users are informed about the Innovation Center in a unique and impressive way. The design has many benefits over a traditional screen such as discrete wiring, multiple slides of information can be shown at once, and it is easily hidden/moveable. The combination of “low-tech” projections plus the physicality of the display reflects the innovative solutions the UIC Innovation Center aims to produce. It was great to see how excited the clients were about my concept in particular. I was delighted when multiple staff members asked me directly about sending the project files and using the display in the new space!
Nate Herrera 