Passing

What is Passing?

The purpose of this project is to display variety of movements of Google employees crossing the bridge.

Using silhouettes, the identities of the employees will not revealed to the viewers, but the user could personalize their movements, color and size, etc.
The silhouettes will overlap with each other and create different shades of color.

The experience is for both internal and external viewers (inside and outside the building) to observe Google employees' traces.
However, only Google employees will be able to interact with the installation.

The external viewers could watch Google employees at work and imagine what each employee is doing.
The Google employees could also interact with people outside of the building by making gestures and adding visual elements to their silhouettes.

Design & User Experience

The installation will use multiple Kinects to capture the movement from average height/eye-level of the users.

This will allow the silhouettes to be displayed at a correct angle rather than from above or below.

Using Kinect's full body joints tracking, we can track the user's orientation, whether he/she is walking sideways relative to the wall or facing the wall.

There are also ways to use Kinect to track faces and recognize faces of the users.

Using this technology, Google employees will be able to interact with the installation by facing the wall.

They will have the choice to personalize their silhouette, turn off their silhouette or playback a montage of their movements.  

Creative Uses of Google API

Connecting their Google accounts with the installation could potentially allow the users to check their emails and calendar.
The user will have to make gestures to interact with wall but it will be simple "point-and-click" type interaction.

He/she simply has to turn away from the wall to stop their interactions and continue to have their silhouettes displayed on the wall.

The silhouettes could also carry notification bubbles that could inform the employees if they have new emails or meetings coming up.
This could allow users who do not necessarily want to interact with the wall could quickly learn their agenda and encourage interactions.

However, it should be also noted that these could be private information that the users would not want to display it on a communal installation in a public space.  

Another way you can use Google API is to use Weather data to change the aesthetics of the backdrop of the installation or the color scheme of the silhouette.

Based on the temperature, the color could change from warm to cold or based on the weather, it could show sun, rain, snow and so on.

Bill of Materials

• Kinect ( 8 - 10 )
  
• Short-Throw Projectors
  
• Transparent Screens/Holographic Screens
  
• Google APIs (Calendar, Gmail, Photos)
• Facial Recognition/Detection System