At the heart of Accenture’s New York headquarters in Hudson Yards lies a captivating display of their thought leadership, consulting expertise, and industry experience.
I worked at Future Colossal as Creative Technologist for two of the eight hives to help showcase Accenture’s vision for the future of eight business categories: Smart Living, Finance, Cloud, 5G, Human Potential, New Consumer, Digital Health, and Life Sciences. These hives utilize cutting-edge technology, stunning art and lighting, and engaging storytelling to bring Accenture’s research to life. This project helps to highlight Accenture’s commitment to shaping the future through innovative thinking and digital transformation. All eight hives were designed, produced, and installed during COVID-19 quarantine restrictions.
Innovation Hives
Smart Living
Project Mission
The installation showcases Accenture’s sustainability efforts through a spherical touchscreen display, a custom fabricated steel map of the NYC, and two 65” TV screens. Users can interact with the globe to learn about Accenture’s impact on communities. Upon interaction, dynamic lighting of the LED lights behind the custom steel map animate corresponding to the specific touch points. Heat maps and data visualization would display accordingly dependent on the
Solution
The project’s mission is to educate and raise awareness about Accenture’s efforts in these areas. Our installation showcases Accenture’s commitment to sustainability and global inclusiveness through interactive displays. The Pufferfish globe invites visitors to engage and learn more, triggering a multimedia experience across two TVs and an NYC steel grid with LED strips.
How we accomplished it
We used a Pufferfish Globe to send UDP messages to the main application, two TVs, and a steel grid with LED strips controlled by Advatek and Madmapper, to showcase Accenture’s sustainability and inclusiveness achievements in an interactive way.
When a user interacts with the pufferfish globe, it sends out a UDP message for Unity to receive. Although several people can interact with the globe at the same time, or the globe takes more than one touchpoint, Unity would receive the message and display the corresponding media content individually in a timely fashion. There is no queue. When one touches another hotspot right after the previous one, the Unity app will display the second one by cutting off the content of the first one.
Worked with Pufferfish company
I worked with Pufferfish company and learned how to use the Pufferfish within a week and also wrote a script to send out UDP message from Pufferfish and was successfully received by the Unity application. I later documented the whole process for the company for internal purpose to save training hours.
One challenge I encounter was we wanted our button to be animated video with transparent background. We tried different video types with transparent background, they didn’t display through the Pufferfish Application Builder, the app to customize the design for the 360 projected touch-screen globe. I then used ffmpeg to experiment with the HAP Codec for the video and they finally worked.
Led the project
I led the project and delivered the project within 2 months. I made the MVP within 1 month and refined from client’s feedback within 1 month.
I designed and implemented logic for the following features:
Communication protocol to receive UDP from Pufferfish and send UDP message to the Artnet Lighting system
Heatmap shader from real time traffic API
Spout out render texture to MadMapper for light mapping for the Artnet Lighting System
Asset storage, calibration, and design transitions for agile onsite installation
Finance Forward
Project Mission
“Finance Forward” offers a unique insight into the ongoing digital transformation in the financial services industry. Through AI-controlled voice and interactive rotating dial, it presents the latest trends in finance, featuring constantly updated information from Wall Street and historic vintage news. Experience the future and history of finance in a captivating, immersive environment. This project drew inspiration from stock ticker installation in a modern structure to display how the core areas of the American financial system were rapidly changing.
User Experience
Our experience transports guests through the digital transformation of the financial services industry, from the past to the present and future. The Idle State displays up-to-date stock graphs, tickers, and a dial that remains off. The Interactive and Deep States are activated by either guest interaction with the dial or docent control with Collaborative Voices AI technology. Guests can experience different narrative themes and information that dynamically transform the space with a turn of the dial or a voice command. The color of each theme is unique, creating a fully immersive experience.
Solution
Our solution involved integrating a combination of stock tickers, multiple monitors, voice AI technology (UnityEngine.Windows.Speech, Offline Recognition Plugin), microphone and audio interface, and a MSI PC. This allowed us to deliver a dynamic and interactive experience, utilizing real-time data and voice activation for seamless content presentation.
This project includes this Main Application, MadMapper that controls the Tickers and 10 screens:
