Welcome to Sidia's Showcase

DENISE

Greetings from SIdia's very first digital employee

More information and temporary exhibit

The multitouch totem has more information about the experience, Sidia, its main technologies and where to find them embedded in the Showcase

The Experience Room

Live the Amazon Rainforest's cycle of high tide and low tide where an area greater than the country of South Korea becomes flooded every year, interacting with fishes, rain and forest creatures

Projectors and Kinect sensors

All curved walls were mapped for full room projection, Kinect sensors enable interactivity with the experience's content, and DMX controls enable synchronization with lighting, sound, and fog

Gift Shop

Some experience-themed souvenirs were designed to be sold in the gift shop, where an automated postcard kiosk with an interactive DENISE salesperson will be built to sell face-tracked emotion-triggered snapshots from the visitors

Process and timeline

How the project started

By the time our team was commissioned for this task, there was one project already under development. Our main goal was to rethink the concept while making the best use of the current space.

The showroom concept was co-created between Mauricio Sá Ribeiro, Fabiano Marinho, and Alice Santos, with additional support from Cesar Edgar.

Timeline

We had 4 months to propose the concept, plan the design and development, set a partnership with another company responsible for all physical structure, build the space, integrate our software with it, refine the software based on the actual experience, and present to our client.

Initial blueprint

The first plan consisted of maintaining the original walls and providing a series of smaller experiences.

Entrance hall concept

Prior to entering the experience, visitors are greeted by an animated character.

Illustration by Cesar Edgar.

Denise's greetings

Inspired by Nexus Studio's work for Google at the World Economic Forum 2019.

Informative totem

To avoid information overload in the main experiences, all technical details regarding the Showcase and Sidia, in general, were taken to the totem.

Illustration by Fabiano Marinho.

First room concept: Forest

Interact with mystical creatures from the forest: the Amazon Rainforest's legendary protector, curupira.

Illustration by Fabiano Marinho.

First room concept layout

Physical props add on to the immersion, paired with fully projected walls and floor, interactive through Kinect sensors.

Illustration by Cesar Edgar.

First room concept preliminary scaled model

To better understand the actual experience, it was necessary to create physical mockups of the environment.

Preliminary model by Alice Santos and illustrations by Fabiano Marinho.

First room concept materials

Suggested materials and decoration for the rooms were also presented.

Interior design by Alice Santos.

Second room concept: Rain

Interact with a thunderstorm by controlling your projected shadow on the wall.

Illustration by Fabiano Marinho.

Second room concept layout

Interact with water puddles, lily pads and your own projections on the rain and underwater with fishes.

Illustration by Cesar Edgar.

Second room concept interior design

The largest room was intended to have a lounge area, where visitors could sit on rock-shaped beanbags and just relax at the sight of fishes and water caustics.

Interior design by Alice Santos.

Second room concept mockup

This model and characters were also used to prepare the sound design concept.

Preliminary model by Alice Santos, and illustrations by Fabiano Marinho.

Second room concept art

Settling into the actual concept to be developed, communication started gaining greater fidelity.

Illustration by Deivison Carvalho.

Second room concept props

The concept art also gave an idea to how props would be positioned in the room.

Illustration by Deivison Carvalho.

Second room concept art: Pirarucu

In this concept art phase, it was defined that the "star of the show” would be a massive pirarucu fish from the Amazon, stylized with a lava lamp body.

Concept art and illustration by Deivison Carvalho.

Third room concept: Digital

As the storyline goes from nature's “mystical past” into its current environment, it reaches its storyline's end at the technology of today. Untangible myth > Inspirational nature > Human-crafted tech.

Illustration by Fabiano Marinho.

Third room concept layout

The visitor is able to interact with a digital assistant that has plenty of information related to Sidia. In the walls, interactive infographics present plenty of informations related to the company.

This concept was eventually dropped because the available space would be too small for so much activity.

Illustration by Cesar Edgar.

Gift Shop's kiosk concept

The idea for the kiosk was to embed the full gift shop into a massive vending machine with a simulated 3D environment and an interactive character serving the visitors.

Inspired by Nexus Studio's work for Google at the World Economic Forum 2019.

D.E.N.I.S.E.

Denise is the first point of contact in the Showcase, triggered by presence using a Kinect sensor. This greeting is the first step in creating DENISE (Development Environment for Natural Interactions within Specific Experiences), which is a video-based chatbot system that handles a complex state machine able to interrupt current interactions when new relevant events occur, returning to a previous interrupted state once this new event is handled.

The chatbot system is under development. Currently, the greeting system consists of a character in an idle animation state transitioning to the greeting monologue upon Kinect-enabled visitor presence trigger.

Informative Totem

The touchscreen totem has information regarding the experience's theme and its technical aspects, in addition to Sidia's technical expertise and where to find examples of each technology inside the Showcase.

Temporary Exhibit

The temporary exhibit presents one product from Sidia. In this case, an upcoming game with a 3-screen ultrawide teaser video and 3 hanging printed banners with animated projection overlay.

Amazon Rainforest Experience

The Experience Room is equipped with multiple projectors, Microsoft Kinect sensors, lighting, hanging banners, fog machines, and a sound system. During the experience's day phase, visitors can chase after forest creatures. During the rain phase, a projected shadow of visitors appear on the wall as the rain falls over it. During the flooded forest phase, fish schools gather next to detected visitors and flee whenever visitors try touching them. One massive fish swims around the room.

Postcard Kiosk

This area is still under development and hasn't been added to the Showcase. It consists of a series of discrete cameras around the room. Whenever visitors are present, a camera capture an image whenever a visitor expresses a very positive emotion. After exiting the Experience Room, right before the gift shop, one digital salesperson in a kiosk will greet the visitor and present a few pictures taken by using face detection algorithms comparing recent pictures with the person standing in front of the camera. The visitor will then be able to select and purchase a Sidia postcard with that picture printed in it.

Gift Shop

Several Sidia-branded items will be on sale and most of the profit will be donated to help protect the Amazon Rainforest. A pirarucu fish plush toy and a curupira forest creature Rubik's cube were designed, to be manufactured and sold on the shop.

Automation

Smartphone controls enable a simple way to turn on and off all equipment in the Showcase, as well as provide some control over the running software.

Sidia SHOWCASE

Welcome to Sidia's Showcase

DENISE

More information and temporary exhibit

The Experience Room

Projectors and Kinect sensors

Gift Shop

Process and timeline

D.E.N.I.S.E.

Informative Totem

Temporary Exhibit

Amazon Rainforest Experience

Postcard Kiosk

Gift Shop

Automation

Where the Showcase is Located