Revitalising Newcastle's Bigg Market through public digital installations

Northumbria University has just completed a successful project with NE1, an international award winning Business Improvement District company.

From September 2018 to January 2019, 16 final year students enrolled on the BA (Hons) Interaction Design program worked with NE1 on a live brief for the Bigg Market Regeneration Project. This £3.2 million project, that includes £1.6 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund, will transform the historic Bigg Market area of Newcastle, restore its historic significance and ensure that it is making its rightful contribution to the city’s economic fortunes now and into the future.
 
In the project, NE1 aims to ‘Give the historic heart back to Newcastle’ by improvements to heritage buildings in the Bigg Market and by changing the profile of people who go there, from a low yield, night time clientele to a higher budget, day and night audience.

In the spirit of NE1’s aim, the students were asked to conceive and design digital installations that would support this initiative. All concepts would build on and celebrate the history and heritage of the Bigg Market. The student developed the concepts using a variety of methods, including exploration of suitable technology, ethnographic studies, personas and user scenarios, and brainstorming using extreme characters and other techniques. To communicate their ideas, the students produced design documents, videos, images and even fully working prototypes, as well as realistic budgets and time plans. In total, there were 8 concepts proposed by the students and presented to NE1.

To find out more about the project and how the results benefitted the partner, we had a chat with Alex Slack of NE1, who worked closely with the university throughout the project.

What was NE1’s interest in working with Northumbria students on Bigg Market?
NE1 have a long standing working relationship with Northumbria University and the school of design is fast becoming one of the leading design institutions in Europe. We were keen to engage the students with the Bigg Market project as they were able to demonstrate a fresh perspective to the challenges we faced. It was evident that they hadn’t become entrenched in their own views of the area and this gave them the freedom to think differently and creatively.

Also as alumni I was excited on a personal level to be going back to the place where I started out on my career path.

The working relationship with the University has been fantastic, we have maintained the right balance in terms of client and academic requirements. I was made to feel incredibly welcome throughout the project and the "client care" afforded to me was of the highest standard. This project has laid the foundations for future collaborations.

From the students presentations. Photo by Alex Slack, NE1

Can you tell us something specific about a few projects?
All of the student projects were to a high standard and the effort and commitment from the students was evident throughout.

The stand out project was the "VOX" Virtual Hologram Box – which took the idea of the once celebrated Bigg Market Zoo and brought it back to life by integrating existing street furniture like bollards with holograms of animals you may find at the Zoo. The students went on to explore how the concept could be commercialised and generate revenue through advertising. I was particularly impressed that the students had produced a working prototype and taken it out to the general public.

Another notable project was `Hear The Bigg Market`, which utilised Audio Spotlighting technology to transport the public back to a bygone era.

Were you inspired to add or change anything in the way you are developing the future of Bigg Market by the work of our students?
Working with the students has definitely inspired me to explore future collaborations and develop the working relationship further.

Below are video presentations from two of the student projects. Perhaps in the future we will see a virtual hologram of an elephant or hear the sounds from a bygone past at the Bigg Market!

VOX - Virtual Hologram Box

VOX prototype

By Franz Pancho and Carine Chang Shi Qian

VOX is a seamless approach to captivate individuals and crowds in exploring the exciting pinpoints of the Bigg Market during its prime.

Inspired by the Winter Zoo in Bigg Market, VOX showcases spectacle holograms of any sort such as the Winter Zoo animals.

Concept for VOX, the Virtual Hologram Box

The aim was to bring the users back in time to experience and also reminisce what the Bigg Market used to be, putting ‘family-oriented’ as the heart of our project’s engagement.

The final design was based on Victorian lamp post design, mixing the old and new in one form factor.

Hear the Bigg Market

By Ethan John Stewart and Josh Humphreys

Concept for Hear the Bigg Market

An unobtrusive and immersive way to explore the historic environment of the Bigg Market using Audio Spotlight technology to engage users.

Features:

• Allows the general public to explore the most iconic sounds of the Bigg Market over the last century.
• Call out to pedestrians using the Bigg Market as a thoroughfare, to incentivise them to engage.
• Audio Spotlights blend seamlessly into the surrounding environment.
• ‘Beacons’ wrapped around trees/objects provide information about what the user is hearing

The course

This work was part of the module Collaboration & Professional Associations 01 in Northumbria University's  BA (Hons) Interaction Design program. It was tutored by Lars Erik Holmquist and Andrew Richardson.

Creating an interactive performance with Northern Dance

Northumbria University is collaborating with Northern Dance to develop a new project in which all media will be controlled by the movements of a single performer in real-time.

Northern Dance will lead a collaborative team combining art, technology and movement, to create a project, Ephemera, that showcases the Gesture and Media System (GAMS) tracking system, created by Moment Research.

This project is being developed at Northern Dance’s new renovated space in the Ouseburn. David Leonard the key driver and principal owner of the parent company Paper Dove, and is collaborating on the music for this project. Mike Chilton is the key player developing the artistic design of the project.  Dancer Maxine Fell, who trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, will control all of the media with her movement. Alexander Gill, currently at the Royal Academy of Music, is designing music and soundscapes to work with the audio system. Steve Gibson from Northumbria School of Design is creating the interactive mapping for control of the media by the dancer, and collaborating on the music. The piece is being proposed to high-profile venues such as the Sage in Gateshead.

This project will create an interface that will allow users to interact with audio, video, lighting and Visual FX in real-time and will do so in a non-linear manner (i.e. allowing for different user experiences) without sacrificing rendering or playback quality. The project will be genuinely multi-disciplinary involving interaction design, dance, animation and Visual FX, and fine art. The key technological innovation will be enabled by the development of the GAMS motion-tracking system. In brief, this system uses infrared trackers (four are possible in the current configuration) and infrared cameras to track users in a space measuring up to 15x15 metres. A GUI-based software can be used to design space so that sound, video, animation, lights and Visual FX can be accessed at different spots in the room and manipulated by the movements of the user.


The lead partner, Paper Dove Company, is a design-led card publisher working with a range of major charities. Twenty years old, the company is majority owned by David Leonard, a graduate artist with an interest in bringing together art and technology in powerful and emotive ways. He has recently established a charitable company - Northern Dance - to make high-quality dance accessible to the public in the North East, keeping local talent in the region. The project is a partnership between Paper Dove Company (as lead) and Northumbria University providing technical development of GAMS. The project is supported by funding from Creativity Works (now Creative FUSE), with funds from the European Regional Development Fund.

Below is video documenting the initial results of the collaboration:



For more information, contact Steve Gibson at Northumbria University!

Opening of the PROTO Emerging Technologies Centre

Photo courtesy of  @weareproto     

The PROTO Emerging Technologies Centre in Gateshead had its official opening on November 1! The event was opened by Gateshead Cllr John Adams, who was joined by speakers from Unity, the Digital Catapult, Pocket Money Games and many others, as well as demos and exhibits from local companies.

Professor Lars Erik Holmquist joined a panel that included hedgehog lab, the North East Tees Valley Immersive Lab, and was lead by PROTO Innovation Manager Alex Cook. Lars Erik talked about the importance of long-term research to create truly ground-breaking innovations, such as the tablet computer and the head-mounted virtual reality display, both first envisioned some 50 years ago.

Thanks for a great event and we look forward to many fruitful collaborations!

Follow PROTO on Twitter or visit their homepage for updates.

A new receptionist experience for PROTO

Northumbria University is collaborating with the PROTO Emerging Technologies Centre in Gateshead to develop a new remotely controlled reception system. VERS, a Virtual Embodied Reception System, was developed by Northumbria Ph.D. student Sam Nemeth under supervision of Professor Lars Erik Holmquist.

VERS is a system that lets a human receptionist greet visitors at multiple entrances. It consists of two parts:

• A screen through which the receptionist can see the remote entrance, and communicate with visitors using voice
• A screen at the entrance through which a visitor can see and communicate with the receptionist 

The screen that greets the visitor can be controlled by the receptionist to pan left and right, using a special-built interface. For instance, the remote receptionist can turn the screen to face the visitor, direct his or her vision to different areas such as the sign-in sheet, or physically indicate a direction. It also lets the users at either end maintain eye contact, which is very important to make the communication feel natural.

The VERS includes several unique purpose-built interfaces, including an ergonomically designed wooden ball to control the motion of the remote screen, and an old-fashioned "hotel bell" to attract attention for visitors.

VERS will be installed in PROTO and greet visitors for the first time at the official PROTO opening night on November 1!

Below is a short video showing some of the ways that a visitor and a receptionist can interact through VERS.