Windows 8 ship party

At the Windows 8 ship party, they had an interactive photo booth which would allow you to take a picture of yourself and digitally draw on the image. It was a mess.

The booth was set up inside a tent at an outdoor event. There was a camera and white canvas backdrop – these worked okay. It was when you got to the image editing that it all fell apart. There was a large-ish display with a pen input. The audience wasn’t allowed to operate the display; instead, they had to instruct the employee what they wanted superimposed. The pen didn’t seem to work very well either. It was unclear why they needed a pen input at all.

The event was for releasing a new version of a computer operating system that is streamlined for pen/touch devices. Why would they have a pen display running the previous version of Windows? The whole thing just seemed like an afterthought for the event.

The one good thing was the souvenir photo (above)!

Assignment: Find a past example of an interactive that was designed for an event. Write a blog post (at least one paragraph) about your critical take on the project. Who is the target audience? Is the interaction clear? How well does it relate to the event? What type of interaction was created? What technologies were used and were they effective? Was it the central focus, or did the piece transcend the technology?