Accio Potterheads! Now, who doesn't love Harry Potter?
Collecting Magic: From Stamps to Wand. A Harry Potter themed interactive installation open to public in the Singapore Philatelic Museum from November 2016 to July 2017. The project received islandwide recognition, gaining attention from local media and blogs, and lucky me got this project for my Final Year Project.
(Warning, I might be a bit geeky... ok maybe more than a bit)
The Project
Always waited for that Hogwarts letter that never came? Well it's here now. This challenge for this project was to turn the popular film 'Harry Potter' into real life experience, hosted by the Singapore Philatelic Museum (SPM). For this, we envisioned and planned for moving portraits, an actual interactive wand and heating stamps.
Deliverables
Interactive portraits along the stairs up and the actual room
An interactive wand connected to the screen, with visual effects happening when the wand is pointed at a certain angles/directions.
Heating stamps that revealed a secret message when a button is pressed.
The PROcess
For this project, we worked closely with the curator in SPM. Sitting through initial meetings, we discussed what we would like to see and experience in this exhibition. Afterwards, I head back to my team of 4 (me and three others), to sit and discuss the user journey. We started plotting the points where users would come and go, and where we should strategically place our experiences and sensors.
We also worked with the Visual Effects students in the school, enlisting their help for video taking, editing and rendering.
The whole building experience required a lot of test 3D printing, stress-testing of the wand, screen and stamps as well as daily trips back and forth from the museum to school. We also took videos of regular people coming to the museum to check out how they interacted with what was near them. We did the observations before the building of the installations, during, and after.
Challenges faced
Heating stamps did not revert back to natural state after sometime, we ended up having to replace them after.
There were a lot more people than we initially expected, due to the popularity of the exhibition and showcase of it in local news and blogs. The sensors were not ready for the huge intake of visitors, therefore not reacting properly. We ended up having to go over one night and re-adjusting the sensors.
People were not gentle with the wand, and yanked it so hard that the sensors got damaged. We overcame this issue by preparing backup wands that were easy to connect to the screen so that the people in the museum could do it by themselves as well.
My role
My job as Team Leader was to delegate the roles to my team mates, and then figuring out what sensors and codes I needed for the project, being also the Lead Programmer. I met with the museum curator and discussed user journeys, as well as getting regular updates from my Team and the visual effects students in order to stay on schedule.
It was an absolute honour to be part of a project that brought my childhood to life.