Press Release
Steel City Tradeshow Highlight by Responsive Spaces Wins the Silver A' Design Award in Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design
Responsive Spaces honored for interface, interaction and user experience design by the international grand jury of the 2019 - 2020 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 23, 2020 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has announced that Steel City Tradeshow Highlight by Responsive Spaces, designed for Primetals Technologies Austria, has been granted the Silver A' Design Award in the Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design category. The recognition forms part of the 2019 - 2020 A' Design Award & Competition and was reached through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who scored anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
What the Silver A' Design Award Means
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
More About Steel City Tradeshow Highlight
The Steel City is a stylized model depicting the steelworks of the future. It consists of semi-transparent acrylic models placed on a led-wall, which serves as a screen for demonstrating various use-cases by literally making the Steel City glow: when selecting one of the scenarios at the terminals, users trigger animations which visualize the processes and work-flows of the steel plant in a firework of light and color projected through the acrylic models on top. The whole experience is extended by a professional layer of information, accessed at the terminals via a unique haptic interface.
About Responsive Spaces
Responsive Spaces is a studio for creative technology, that creates and develops immersive and interactive brand experiences. Its tangible and walkable digital installations focus on immersive and interactive story telling and therefore combine any kind of digital worlds with physical places and locations. Recent projects range from trade shows, exhibitions and digital enhanced architecture to live-events and digital prototyping. Responsive Spaces takes pride in focusing on the story and the messages that ought to be delivered and then leverages almost any kind of digital technology to propel them to new heights.
Award Record
This recognition makes Responsive Spaces a winner of 3 A' Design Awards. The awards were granted between the 2017 - 2018 and the 2019 - 2020 editions of the A' Design Award & Competition.
About the A' Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design Award
The A' Interface Design Award is an international design competition recognizing good user interface designs by the best UI/UX designers worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to interface designers, interaction designers, user experience designers and digital product designers from all countries. Typical entries include websites, mobile applications, software interfaces, game interfaces, wearable interfaces and virtual reality interfaces. The awarded interface designs are published at https://dezigners.org/design-category/interface
About A' Design Award & Competition
Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://dezigners.org/89866
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/89866
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!89866
- Laureate Profile: https://dezigners.org/d/217352
- Further Information from the Laureate: http://bit.ly/2ylzmcr
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Steel City Tradeshow Highlight
- Function
- Tradeshow Highlight
- Category
- Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design
- Discipline
- Communication Design
- Industry
- Software
- Colors
- Silver, Dim Gray, Dark Slate Gray, Indian Red and Gray
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Primetals Technologies Austria
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Responsive Spaces
- Country
- Austria
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2019 - 2020
- Design ID
- #89866
Credits
- Team
- Markus Pargfrieder, Katharina Mayrhofer, Julian Reil and Martin Zeplichal
- Image Credits
- Photo credits: Responsive Spaces & Philip Kistner Fotografie Video credits: Responsive Spaces & Eyup Kuş
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- The operation of the Steel City is bound to a unique rotary knob: While turning, several "steps" can be felt as "real" physical resistance. These are not analog in nature, but instead are generated through a magnetized liquid inside the knob's housing and can be programmed in realtime. The knob is programmed to adapt accordingly to every selected content and therefore enabling the experts from Primetals to focus on their visitors without ever taking their eyes off the presented stories.
- Inspiration
- Our inspiration for this project was to merge the necessity of visualizing extremely complex processes with an easy to use and intuitive haptic interface. The goal was to have an installation that would deliver expert knowledge on point and at the same time act as an visual highlight of the stand while maintaining the structural complexity of its professional use-cases. We wanted to merge a magical experience with a top notch user experience into a tool that serves the expertise of our client and helps them to deliver this expertise effortless to all visitors at the trade show stand.
- Research
- One of the research objectives was to develop an interface which can be programmed in real-time for the haptic rotary knob. We developed an in-house protocol which is able to communicate changes in the haptic structure to the hardware on the fly corresponding to the content on-screen. Another objective was to simplify the immensely complex processes and mechanisms of a steelplant to a stylized level which can be transported onto our model and create a visual language that is at the same time beautiful to watch and informative on a professional level.
- Challenge
- While our client is highly specialized in the field of steelworks and thus needed to communicate complex technical information to its own clients and partners, we still wanted to maintain a very productive level of minimalism for this installation in order to deliver their messages in a crystal-clear and visually aesthetic manner. Also, for the people operating the terminals and navigating through the different use-cases, we needed a haptic interface that is simple enough, yet incredibly responsive to the user in order for them to fully concentrate on the dialog with their customers.
- Realization and Technology
- Over 200 different semi-transparent acrylic 3D-models were designed and manufactured depicting the model of a modern steel plant and were placed on a 24 sqm led-wall. The interfaces of the terminals around the Steelcity are specifically designed and built for the purpose of a haptic and intuitive user-experience. On top of the installation is a special reflective material, which mirrors the whole visualization of the acrylic models on the led-wall and projects it towards the far corners of the stand, giving everybody an additional perspective.
- Operation and Interaction
- By selecting one of 12 scenarios at 4 terminals users can trigger animated sequences on the led-wall, which visualize the processes and work-flows of a steel plant in a firework of light and color. Steel is processed, data packets buzz through virtual lines, problems and solutions are displayed schematically and in context, always projected through the acrylic models on top. While the Steel City blends all stories perfectly, the terminals offer in-depth details to the individual users.
- Project Duration and Location
- June 2019 in Duesseldorf at METEC 2019
- Specifications
- Over 200 acrylic 3D-models of a steel plant positioned upon a 6,5 x 4,5 meter led-wall, which is positioned horizontally between 4 interactive terminals. Every terminal utilizes a rotational knob featuring haptical feedback that changes in realtime corresponding to its navigational state. Cubic dimensions of the whole installation: 8m x 5m x 5,5m. The led-wall is raised 60cm from the floor, housing the hardware necessary for operating the installtion beneath.
- Keywords
- haptic interface, digital staging, interactive installation, digital enhanced acrylic models
