Experientia s.r.l

Experientia

LifeStream

News update: Exhibition at the Triennale Design Museum

Experientia, and the Lifestream project, will be one of the protagonists of the exhibition designoftheotherthings, along with 9 other Italian participants. Designoftheotherthings will be held at the Triennale Milano from May 25th to June 27th.
Stefano Maffei is the curator of the exhibition, which explores the ways in which the world of design is changing, becoming transversal and interfacing increasingly with other fields, such as art, technology, management, fashion and scientific research. The collection demonstrates several interesting and problematic dimensions of undertaking alternative research (of 360° design) in Italy.

Experientia, e il progetto Lifestream saranno protagonisti, insieme ad altri 9 casi italiani, della mostra designoftheotherthings, allestita presso Triennale Milano dal 25 maggio al 27 giugno 2010.
La mostra, curata da Stefano Maffei, ha come obiettivo quello di mettere in luce come il mondo del design stia cambiando, diventando trasversale e interfacciandosi sempre più con campi quali arte, tecnologia, management, moda e ricerca scientifica.
Una collettiva che mette in evidenza alcune dimensioni interessanti e problematiche del fare ricerca (di design a 360°) alternativa in Italia.

“The deliverables are top-notch through and through — thinking, content, findings, approach, design, layout — everything is beautifully executed. I am so impressed. … [Experientia’s] are the best deliverables the Concept Development got in the year I worked there.”

Jenny Dunlop, past manager of the Vodafone Concept Development Group.

Information visualisation was a foresight project with the aim of understanding and innovating in the space of data visualisation and interaction paradigms. Experientia designed and prototyped an interactive interface for visualising large quantities of information.

The first phase of the project created a benchmark document that presented a gallery of existing visualisation models and current methods of representing data.

After an initial design phase, involving co-creative workshops and concept generation, Experientia and Aeolab combined all their insights into a sophisticated visualisation prototype, together with a video presentation of the interface features, using software such as Flash and Processing.

Envisioning
Current technologies allow people to capture, warehouse and retrieve vast amounts of data. As companies look at ways of storing and accessing this information, Experientia took a unique starting point, asking:

Do we want to store everything just because we can? How can people best access their data? Can computer systems be intuitive enough to treasure our important information, and to let the rest go?

Understanding
Before the Experientia team put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), we carried out extensive research on designing information visualisations, effective human-computer interfaces, the nature of information and the ways in which people search for information.

We created a Gallery booklet, containing photos and descriptions of some of the most innovative current tangible and visual interfaces and solutions to visualising information.

Design
To start the design phase, the team brainstormed seven mini-concepts and five mood-boards, and took these into a co-creative workshop with the client, which led to the final vision.

Prototyping
The team combined the most relevant mini-concepts into the Lifestream Visualisation, showing the precious data and information that have accrued around a person over time.

10 video-scenarios, created using Flash and Processing software, demonstrated interface features and applications of the Lifestream.

Final deliverables
We have envisaged a world in which information visualisation is not just useful, but also beautiful. Where information patterns show us the connections and coincidences in people’s lives, remind them of favourite memories and moments, and allow all that is no longer relevant to fall away like dust. We call it the LifeStream.

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Prototypes (you need Java Runtime to run these prototypes)