Summary of the week: We nailed down a new and improved direction for our concept with colored umbrellas, pedestals with objects, and hidden messages revealed through UV light. We tested several components of our project, consulted with employees at the CMU School of Drama, and prepared for halves next week!

Project Metrics

As a team, we chose the top metrics for our project to be: audio, storytelling, and client requirements. We also care about immersion, as Shirley brought up with us afterwards.

Weekly Instructor Meeting

At our faculty meeting, we brought up our concerns about the current direction with the umbrella and the storm and a potential new concept of a tree centerpiece. Our advisors gave us their thoughts about it being too late to change concepts. They also brought up that everyone was already on board with the previous umbrella/storm concept so they did not want us to totally change directions. They advised us to think about what elements we must incorporate into the installation and how we could slightly, not majorly, adjust or add elements to the umbrella/storm concept that will make the team feel confident in the direction going forward.

Team Meeting 

We got together as a team to craft our plan forward and get back on the same page. We started by creating a list of everything in our experience that we absolutely plan to have:

• Clouds
• Directional speakers
• Strings/wire rigging our set pieces
• House speakers
• Character audio
• Storm audio
• UV lights

Then, we got a list of all of our top concepts. Each of these concepts would include the items in the above list, but just in a different application:

• Tree in the center of the lobby that people can write on/place notes on the branches
• Original concept of umbrellas hanging from the ceiling
• Props representing the characters
• Invisible ink writing on the walls/windows
• Throne centerpiece that people could sit on

We then did a Pugh chart as a team to compare the different ideas based on the following categories that were important to our team:

• Aesthetics
• Storytelling
• Intuitive
• Variability 
• Feasibility/Scope
• Impactful Interaction
• Client Needs
• Throughput 

In the end, the umbrella concept still ranked the highest on average. The character prop idea also ranked pretty highly, so we began working as a team to brainstorm if there was a way to combine these concepts.

New and Improved Installation Concept

After our discussion, we worked as a team to land on a direction that we all felt confident in. In the end, we decided on a concept that built upon the original concept of the storm and the umbrellas hanging from the ceiling, but improved the immersion and interaction. With our new concept, we will still have the clouds and umbrellas hanging from the ceiling and now each umbrella will be themed to a different character in color and audio track. We will also be adding pillars under each umbrella that will hold objects that represent the characters. On the pillars will be hidden messages written in invisible ink that will be revealed with cracks of UV lightning.

Jiaxin created new concept art:

The installation as it appears normally:

The installation as it appears during a UV crack of lightning, revealing the hidden messages on the pedestals:

Both the team and our faculty advisors felt very positively about these improvements and we are all happy moving in this direction. After getting approval on the concept from our faculty advisors, our team sourced materials we needed including UV flood lights, invisible ink (different colors), umbrellas (different colors, large enough for multiple people to fit under), more clouds, and fishing line to hang up the set pieces.

Meeting with Susan Tsu and David Randolph

We went to the CMU Purnell Lobby to meet with Susan Tsu, who runs the string installation, and David Randolph, the facilities manager. We spoke about previous installations that they had done and how they were accomplished and installed. We also asked about power and sound in the lobby. It was great to meet with them and get their advice for our installation. We will continue to work with them throughout this process. After our discussions with Susan Tsu and David Randolph, we feel confident moving forward with our plan of hanging our set pieces from the second floor balcony and wiring everything to the outlets on the second floor balcony.

Testing

We performed tests of our speakers, average dB levels of loud crowds, and clouds hanging over the balcony at the ETC!

We tested our speakers in a crowded RPIS with 35 people inside. The dB level was found to be 75 dB, which was similar to our data from the Purnell Lobby. The speaker worked very well, even with the noise in the environment. The sound was clear under the umbrella and dropped off as you walked away, which was just what we wanted. Without the noise of the crowd, guests are able to hear the audio of the umbrella without being under it, yet with the crowd noise the “leaked” audio was covered. 

We also tested on site at the Purnell Lobby! We held our directional speaker from the second floor balcony, the height that we are planning to install at, and we were able to hear very clearly from the first floor! Our contact Eliot was also at the Purnell Lobby while we were testing and she was very impressed with the speaker and excited at the results!

We also did some testing of hanging the clouds from the balcony of the second floor at the ETC. We wanted to see how the clouds looked from the floor beneath as well as how the microphone sensitivity was at different levels. The clouds might be a little small for the installation as is, so we will plan to add fluff to enlarge the clouds. The microphone and lighting response to sound worked well.

Preparation for Halves

We are presenting first next week on Monday! So we spent a lot of time this week preparing our presentations and materials for halves.

We decided to begin our presentation with a theatrical overview of the guest experience and a demo of the directional audio systems. Then, we will go into more information about our experience and how we are achieving it.

Aldora created a user journey for the experience:

What we put in the presentation was the simplified version, and below is the Persona and User Journey Document of the installation.

Charlie created bios for each of the characters and wrote examples of lines that they could speak in the experience:

After preparing our PowerPoint, we presented to our faculty advisors. They overall had very positive feedback for us: 

• Loved the theatrical intro
• Good energy throughout
• Passing the mics was smooth
• Advice for small details to address for clarity, like reordering slides and explaining some more of the details. This concept did not exist at quarters, so many people are going in not knowing what our current project is. People will be absorbing a lot of information at once and we want to make sure everything is as clear as possible. We also want to accurately portray all of the work that we have done so far in hopes of getting the most relevant feedback as opposed to issues that we already addressed or knew about. 

We then rehearsed over the weekend in the RPIS to make sure we were prepared for Monday morning. Our rehearsal went well and we were all set for Halves!