Client Request: Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) wanted an experiential installation that encouraged discussion of HR topics.

Agency Solve: Create a game-like interactive floor that encouraged human interaction.

Creative Tech Approach: We wanted to give users a bubble that would follow the individual and interact with each other when they were near. The goal was to have two smaller bubbles with HR topics combine into a larger bubble, resulting in a question about HR. This question would act as an ice breaker for workplace conversation.

This approach reminded me of a Metaball (combining bubbles) and a Voronoi diagram (individual bubble zone). I had papers about Metaball and Voronoi Diagram so started to implement them.

I first implemented Metaballs in cpu but it turned out even with the strongest cpu (9900k), if there were more than 50 bubbles, it started to slow down so I needed to move all the calculations to GPU (we used RTX 2080 but I wish we had 2080ti).

• Note: Always go for highest resolution with highest FPS! This matters! (coming from competitive first person shooter game player, fps does matter!).

When developing, the bubble visuals had to have three major characteristics:

1. The user must have the bubble following them so they feel like they own it

2. These individual bubbles must combine smoothly when close by so it doesn’t feel like they are invading other users zones

3. The interactions should be visually interesting, so users will come up to the floor voluntarily (yeah, take that instagram shot.. I did!) The below gifs are the first iteration on the bubble visual style:

Once we had explored visual styles, we started developing for bubble interactions. Questions we considered were: How big should the bubble be? How close should the bubbles be before combining? What if users stayed in the same position for too long? How do we make this ADA compliant? (It turns out, the floor actually measured difference in voltage to sensor footsteps, so we attached little band of foil did the trick for rubber wheels or arm).

During development and testing, we made our color theme and made movement smooth and user friendly. Below is a clip of testing dense foot steps (this was still under development on a much smaller scale).

After weeks of tuning and debugging we went to Vegas! Below are images from the actual installation at the Las Vegas Convention Center:

Videos below are final visuals and user experience all running at a resolution a little under 4k and 60fps, regardless of number of people (sensory inputs).

For the Oculus event, we changed the user experience. The user demographics for this activation were different and we did not expect people passing to have HR conversations with each other.

To tailor the software to this installation, we made a bubble with an HR topic and asked users to “add their voice” to those topics by stepping on the yes button. Once they stepped on the button, the vote registered to an LED wall that was tracking the total votes.