I like to encourage students to move the design process out of software as soon as possible, and into the real world. This means test early and often: test your real work with real users. I believe it’s best to implement your ideas to learn how to make them better, rather than trying to get it all right in your head or on-screen. Because the work depended so heavily on function, the prototype process began early and was demanding.

Team: Paolo Catalla, Jennifer Barrett, Amanda Matzenbach

Because we knew some components of the installation might be located on different floors and areas of the building, our goal was to have all the components of the installation belong to one easily recognizable identity. The identity team worked through a few iterations and arrived at a system linked to the geometry and aesthetic of the QR code. Depth and implied perspective were applied, as a thematic nod to the exploration of space and multi-planar executions.

Initial brainstorming produced a few promising conceptual directions. One of the initial ideas was to create a large scale building projection…an ambitious undertaking that came close to being realized, but the hardware came a little too late! Knowing that the building projection was a longshot, the class continued to work on interactive ideas for the interior spaces of the Taubman Center. Some of the strongest ideas included interactive projections and spaces, the increasing adoption of the QR code, as well as architectural typographic explorations.

A few brave students put in some extra time over spring break to explore the initial possibilities, and through some experimentation, arrived at a combination of a few directions. We discovered that a QR could be played with, applied to multiple planes in a space, formally altered, and could still remain functional. We then agreed that all QR codes in this project must remain functional, and that became one of our primary creative constraints. We decided to explore ways the QR could be an interactive medium, with the goal of redfining the spaces of the Taubman Center.