The Crack | Interactive Design
Client
MAPmima，NSW, Australia
Project
Team Project
Design
Interaction Design| UX Design
Duration
2 months
Tool
Challenge
The main challenge of this project is to design innovative, interactive experiences for MAP mima’s high-tech public spaces, balancing cultural relevance, inclusivity, and accessibility. Designers must overcome technical constraints of the Cube's proximity sensor-based projections and the catenary’s web-controlled LED lights while creating seamless, engaging interactions for individual and group users across diverse scenarios.
Overview
The Crack is an interactive exhibiton designed to transform the Cube at Speers Point Park into an immersive space that explores loneliness as a shared human experience. Visitors interact with glowing cracks on the walls, which open wider with gestures, revealing layers of light and releasing particles that brighten the space. The project combines emotional storytelling with innovative motion-capture technology, inviting participants to reflect on vulnerability and connection. By turning loneliness into a metaphorical window to light, The Crack fosters self-discovery, healing, and communal engagement.
Final Design
A crack signifies damage, yet it also serves as a portal to light. By depicting loneliness as a crack in one's emotional landscape, we redefined it as more than just a wound but a potential pathway to connection. Based on this narrative, our interactive experience begins with participants engaging with these metaphorical cracks, symbolizing loneliness as an opportunity to open up their hearts and let light into their lives. As they do so, vibrant particles emerge through the cracks and flow to the floor, symbolizing the energy flowing in from the outside world. These particles then engage with participants on the floor, tracing their steps and leaving behind a trail of their paths. Over time, these trails fade but persist, reminding participants of the shared journeys they undertake, eventually forming an interconnected network—a powerful symbol of the bonds we forge through connection.
Storyboard
Passive mode
Interaction by one individual
In a dim, immersive space, enormous cracks faintly glimmer on the walls.
Each crack emits faint light from its center, sparking curiosity about what lies beyond.
As Ann approaches a crack, it trembles and begins to open slightly.
As Ann waves her right hand, the crack's right side opens, releasing a few particles.
As Ann spreads out both arms and waves, the crack widens further, releasing an increased flow of particles.
The particles gradually flow to the floor.
Interaction by multiple individuals
Ann looks down to find some particles accumulating around her foot.
As Ann takes a few steps, she notices a trail of particles left behind her.
As Ann begins to walk around the room, her path intersects with others', overlapping their trajectories.
The overlapping trails form a network-like pattern.
The widening cracks, particles, and interconnected trails collectively illuminate the once dark environment
Technology
Figure 8: Kinect set up in the Cube
To achieve a fully immersive projection where visitors can use gestures to manipulate virtual cracks on the walls and generate particle traces on the floor, it is crucial to strategically deploy advanced technology such as the Kinect sensor. Installing Kinect sensors at the ceiling corners of the Cube ensures comprehensive coverage and precise gesture detection. This configuration not only captures all movements but also amplifies gesture-based interactions that draw in visitors and support the transmission of non-verbal information, enriching the emotionally charged atmosphere within the Cube (Zhao, 2019). By incorporating these Kinect sensors, the system delivers real-time feedback to the projections, markedly improving the interactive experience and rendering the installation both captivating and intuitive.
Impact Statement
Our design “The Crack: A Window to Connection” is rooted in the profound understanding that Speers Point, with its median age significantly above the national average and a considerable portion of residents born overseas, is a community where feelings of loneliness are common because of the age gap and weak bond relationship between the community and new immigrants. Our concept targets this pervasive issue by transforming the experience of loneliness in a metaphorical way from a private struggle into a shared journey towards connection, reflecting the resilience and potential for growth within the community of Speers Point.
Initial user tests have shown that enhancing the animation effects to make the cracks more dynamic draws participants in, fostering engagement and prolonging interaction. These adjustments are based on direct feedback from our community, ensuring that the installation is not only a piece of art but a responsive and evolving part of the local environment.
Our approach is scientifically designed to enhance user engagement and interaction. The Cube is designed to be inviting and responsive, two critical aspects highlighted in the discourse for successful public interactive installations. In addition, effective public interfaces should engage users instantaneously, promoting quick and easy interaction that doesn't require extensive instruction or learning curves (Hespanhol & Tomitsch, 2015). The Cube capitalizes on this by employing intuitive metaphors allowing visitors to interact with their representations of loneliness in a manner that is both instinctive and insightful. These metaphors are designed to resonate on a universal level, making the concept immediately accessible and deeply impactful.
The interactive experience we've crafted does not just serve as a mirror to personal emotions but also acts as a reflection of community spirit, drawing individuals together through shared experiences and mutual understanding.
Deliver
User Evalution
User testing on lo-fi prototypes was conducted to improve the design of the crack and particle systems, focusing on both usability and engagement. The think-aloud method was used during usability tests to obtain real-time user interaction insights. For engagement, product reaction cards captured users' emotional and cognitive responses. Additionally, post-test interviews helped explore further details of the users' experiences that might not have been initially apparent, and a thematic analysis was incorporated to further refine our understanding for iterations.
User Evaluation Cont.
Develop
Design Solution
An Overarching Theme for Design: Loneliness
The atmosphere of the dark environment represents the loneliness of people's inner selves.
Dark environment
Cracks on the walls
A large crack when exerting force
Layers behind the crack
Tunnel
Particles from the outside world
Particles on the ground
The cracks on the walls symbolize a broken heart and vulnerability, yet they also signify opportunities and windows.
Crack size corresponds to human interaction. The more force you exert to peeling open these cracks, the larger they become.
Peeling back one layer of cracks reveals more, showing that understanding oneself and breaking free from loneliness takes even more effort and courage.
Opening the cracks forms a tunnel, enabling people to discover their true selves and connect with the outside world.
Particles at the tunnel's end symbolize soul freedom and true self, interactable via gestures.
Particles emerge from the tunnel, fading the track and brightening the area as they interact with new visitors.
Elements
Figure 3: Picture of MAP mima
Drawing from our background research, we've identified loneliness as a profoundly meaningful theme to present at MAP mima. With the aim of encouraging individuals to take a deeper look at the nature of loneliness and our relationship with it, we've chosen to assign an overarching theme to both the Cube and the Catenary, allowing for a more comprehensive exploration of this topic.
Ideation
Storyboard
A dark room with cracks appearing on the screens, faintly glimmering in the dark and lonely space.
The range the
crack’s movement changes according to Amy's movement range.
When Amy leaves, the crack heals, and all the particles come out of the crack and flow to the floor.
Amy walks towards a crack. It shakes and opens up a little as she approaches.
When the crack is through, Amy finds that at the end of the tunnel are a lot of bright shiny particles.
Sam and Noah enter the Cube and find that the particles on the floor are interacting with them.
Amy tries to open the crack more and finds there are layers of walls inside, particles emerge when each wall is opened up.
These particles interact with Amy’s movements.
The space becomes brighter because of the particles.
What's inside this glistening crack?
They are following my hands...
The wider my movement, the more particles there are
The particles flow to the floor!
They are following our steps!
Concept 1： Loneliness can be a crack, but a crack can be a window to light
Concept 2： How does it feel like to mend something that is destined for destruction?
The vascular network
One of the consequences of rising sea levels is the disruption of river networks by seawater flooding. Considering the similarity of river network and vascular network, we want to use the pathological process of vascular network to represent the catastrophic consequences that sea level rise may cause to human living environment. The light blue color was used to echo the theme of water.
The lump
The swelling and the color shift to purple suggest illness.
The rapture
The blue fluid coming out of the rapture indicates the cause of the illness: sea water.
The destruction
The blue fluid accumulates on the bottom of the walls, and when the system reaches the threshold of destruction, the entire network will burst into a large amount of blue liquid that will flood the walls, symbolizing the danger posed by rising sea levels.
Storyboard
The walls are covered in a network of veins that looks sick. Most of the veins are in light blue color.
Sam finds that there is a vein turning purple as they swell.
Can I do something about it?
It can be healed by us! Come on!
What’s wrong with it?
Sam puts his hand on the rupture, and it starts to heal. Surprised, Sam asks his friend Paul to join him.
More and more people join to help heal the network.
Despite the healing attempts, the network continues to deteriorate towards inevitable destruction when 40% of the surface is broken, flooding the whole space in the end.
The lump gets worse, shedding dark blue fluid down the wall.
Define
Research
The Community
According to the 2021 Census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Speers Point has a population of 3,400 residents, with 47.6% being male and 52.4% female. The median age in Speers Point is 45, which is 7 years older than the national median age of Australia, indicating a relatively balanced age distribution. This demographic profile suggests an older community compared to the national average.
Figure 1: Census date of Speers Point
The Audience at MAP mima
On March 10th, our team visited MAP mima and conducted 15 interviews with visitors. We gathered valuable insights from the feedback of local residents interviewed there.
Surprisingly, only 20% have visited the Cube for exhibitions, which is much lower than we had anticipated.
20%
All interviewees reside in the Speers Point area.
100%
More than 80% of them regularly visit Speers Point Park either every other weekend or monthly.
80%
Addressing Community Loneliness
A survey from the longitudinal Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) suggests that, consistently from 2001 to 2021, about 1 in 5 Australians agreed with the statement 'I often feel very lonely'.
Figure 2: Long-term health condition of Speers Point
Discover
