Secret Garden is an interactive installation which consists of an interactive wall and a 3D holographic projector table. The concept is designed for apartment residents and aimed to promote and strengthen the relationship between residents in the apartment and create opportunities to bring them together.
Firstly, passersby will be attracted by the hologram table with kinds of touch pads on it. There are four touch pads on the table which represent water, sunshine, fertilizer and deworming. The four elements can be used to make the flower blooming. Pressing different touch pads will trigger different kinds flowers and sound effects. Only residents work together can they plant different flowers because we want to provide a collaborative experience for residents in order to promote their social relationship.
After they successfully nurtured a flower, the flower will be projected on wall to decorate the visual garden. Residents can also leave voice messages on the flower so that other residents can listen to the voice stories by touching the flowers on the wall. We encourage people share their positivity and stories whether it is to talk about their daily good moments or to reach out to their neighbors.
Technical Description
Physical construction
The installation consists of pyramid holographic cover, monitor, touch pads, LED strips, microphone, leaf buttons, interactive wall and projector. The team used acrylic boards to make the holographic projector, with a monitor to play the 3d flower blooming animations. The touch pads represent four elements: water, sunshine, deworming and fertilizer that can help growing the flowers. Leaf buttons are used to identify the quantity of users. LED strips are used to guide people to interact with the touch pads. Users can choose to record their voice messages when they finish growing flowers. The wall is for presenting the flowers that have been nurtured and can play voice messages.
1.Holographic projector
2.Touch Pads & Table
3.LED strip,Leaf button & Wall
Technical construction
Flowers were designed in Adobe Illustrator and the animations were made by Adobe After Effect. The touch pads were drawn in conductive ink that connected with Arduino. It can trigger the blooming animations when people touching the pads. The team made different flower scenes in Unity, different number of users interact with the touch pads can trigger different kinds of flowers.
1.Flower animations
2.Arduino & Unity
Final Statement
Since the Ninjas only have three members on campus, we took a lot of time during the setup and encountered unexpected problems like the low conductivity of the conductive ink due to the wet air, bugs in the circuits, etc. Thankfully, our team members tried their best solved the problems.
In the final exhibition, the installation was successful attracting and encouraging people work together to nurture flowers, its success at promoting social connections amongst strangers. All functions of the product worked well, the LED strips on the table can guide users to touch different pads. Leaf buttons on the ground can identify how many users are interact with the product. People can also record their voice messages on the wall. They like the idea that leaving messages to others.
The overall feedback from users is that the blooming animations are adorable and fantasy, they were all attracted by it and wanted to interact with the installation. In addition, the Ninjas also reflected what could be better. Firstly, differentiate the colour of the touchpad with other decoration elements. Users pointed out that the four elements of the touch pad were not clear enough, people can only tell the sunshine and the worm. Secondly, we will adjust the height of the holographic projector because people were concentrated on the wall when they pressing buttons.
