Exhibition Design

Sneaker Hype —
connecting virtual + real world

The Sneaker hype have gained more and more attention during the last years. They are no longer sport shoes only, but emerged as everydays shoes and in some cases as part of a fashion statement among youth culture. Ironically the majority don’t know what they wear on their feet. In order to eliminate this ignorance we built an interactive cummunication system which informs the user about Sneaker Design and History in a store or exhibition context.

Exhibit at the push conference in Munich /2016

We developed an interactive communication system with a simpel information architecture allowing manageable and tangible usage. The target of the project is to display deeper insights into the design and technology of sneakers. In order to demonstrate this, we used one of the most iconic sneakers of the 90s and today.

While the information about the sneaker is projected on a wall the iPad is used to navigate through the different topics. The center of the system is occupied by a virtual 3D-model of a sneaker, which can be controlled by rotating the presented shoe in real time.

Landing page of the interactive exhibit.

Interaction

The User is able to choose from a variety of sneaker and place it on the podestals platform in front of him. Using NFC the System is able to track which Sneaker is chosen, now. The embedded display in the podestal serves as navigation interface and guides the user though the system. By swiping on the display he/she can switch between three topics, which will be streamed on a huge projection in front of him/her.

The comparison of virtual and real components at the same time enables detailed insights and creates a lively experience

Though the most interesting aspect is that the sneaker itself can be used for various interactions. In order to make the shoes’ haptic perceptible and create a direct comparison between materials and design we implemented a 3-dimensional model of the sneaker moving simultaneously to the movements of the real sneaker. This enables a contextualised explanation of what the user sees and feels during that moment.
In the last part the user can navigate through the sneakers design chronolgy and contrast the different models.

Mockup of the iPad navigation panel (normally integrated inside the exhibit)

Setup

The setup consists of a projection, tablet as input device and an iPhone's gyro sensor which was placed inside of the sneaker. We used the platform shiftr.io to connect the two input devices with our receiver (MacBook) as the components should be able to communicate among each other. The iPad sends the users navigation data while the iPhone keeps pushing it's gyro data through the network.

Team

Simon Lutter
Janis Walser
Florian Deitermann
lectured by Fabian Schröbel

Project

Interactive Communication Systems
2nd Semester — Summer 2016
HfG Schwaebisch Gmuend