Serenity Studios inspires students with Interactive storytelling installations at University of Oregon

University of Oregon

School of Journalism and Communication

The University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communications wanted a visually stunning, interactive experience that celebrates the outstanding success of its many notable alumni while inspiring students with possibility.

As part of a recent remodel and reimagining of the SOJC building, the school wanted to create an engaging visual anchor for the Hall of Achievement that would honor alumni, inspire students, and connect generations.

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Numerous SOJC graduates have gone on to become award-winning, industry-leading journalists, authors, film makers, and communication strategists over the past 100 years—including luminaries such as Ann Curry, Frank Shaw, and Dan Wieden. The Hall of Achievement connects today’s students with this legacy of success. It also serves as a recruitment tool and is where every school tour starts.

Inspired by the creative possibilities, Serenity took on the challenge of designing something

truly awesome that exceeded client expectations and was worthy of the school’s famous alumni while also enticing today’s students to actually stop and engage with it.

Putting this level of “awe” in awesome meant assigning an experienced design team who understands how to use modern touchscreen technology like Intuiface  for maximum effect. We explored important questions about different user perspectives and developed multiple design iterations to create an experience that is visually enticing from any angle and fun to use. This required careful planning and strategic development that considered two different viewing perspectives—marveling at it from a distance or interacting with it up close—and both experiences need to coexist simultaneously.

Instead of just conceptualizing wire frames on a computer, we engaged in an extensive mock-up and testing process using a projector system that allowed us to simulate the full-scale viewing experience inside our studio. Our team also curated and organized hundreds of photos, videos, and quotes to create the stories of each inductee. Bio modules were then populated using a custom-built database that adapts to each person’s story based on their available content. Users can filter inductee stories by the year of induction, graduation, or academic track—whether it’s advertising, TV production, or publishing.

The 14-foot video wall tells visual stories about the inductees at full-screen size through rotating images, videos, and accolades. Module dashboards allow more than one person to interact with the installation at a time.Viewers can easily navigate through bios and drill down into content with familiar swipe and tap mobile gestures. To ensure equal accessibility, individual dashboard modules can be dragged up and down on the wall so it’s always at eye-level regardless of the user’s height.

Serenity developed a customized back-end system so that it would be easy for the client to add new inductees and additional content moving forward. Since we understand the many technical considerations of touchscreen design and implementation, we also ensured the right hardware and software were combined to make it all work seamlessly.