Civil Debate Wall

Local Projects, 2011.
Interaction Design and Development Intern.
Collaborated in conceptual development, interaction design, interface design and prototyping.

Brief

The objective of this project was to design an electronic forum in which students from diverse backgrounds can debate and discuss some of the most intriguing issues of our time, using new digital tools. The project is essentially targeted at students at the University of Florida, United States.

The Civil Debate Wall is an electronic forum that facilitates constructive dialogue amongst students at the University of Florida, which is also one of the politically active campuses in the state. Incidents such as police assaults and fights between student bodies supporting different political camps are common.

The Wall, comprising five multi-touch screens stitched together into one wall at the main university campus, is a media-based interface that fosters debate on different controversial issues both on and off campus. Students can get access to the forum by using The Civil Debate Wall directly or any of the touchscreen kiosks in libraries, residences, sport facilities and coffee shops or from the Civil Debate Wall website. The conceptualization, interaction and interface design of the wall were developed in the course of six months at Local Projects LLC, NYC. Two prototypes were tested on site for two weeks and around 315 students participated in the process of user testing.

Pictures of the final setup:

Video showing the final setup:

Video showing the second prototype:

Credits

Principal: Jake Barton. Head of Interaction Designer : Ian Curry. Art Director: Katie Lee. Project Directors: A’yen Tran. Interaction Designer: Angela Chen. Graphic Designer: Jonathan Han. Interaction design Intern: Promila Roychoudhury. Development Intern: Peter Holzkorn.