Have you heard of the art-rental at the DOK library in Delft? This was the question we asked people passing the streets of Delft. The answer was overwhelmingly “No!”, so, believing in the cause, we decided to do something about it.
As a subject of choice I added Cross-Media Interaction Design to my bachelors degree. The assignment was to find a topic of your liking and to think up a campaign that would use multiple media to engage more people.
My group and I chose the art-rental department of the local library. I had been there a couple of weeks before on the museum night and got very interested with this concept, but also heard the struggles they were having to survive.
Our main product was an app. The app made use of the camera to scan colors in your house. Using the colors and your preferences for a style and an emotion of your liking it would suggest artworks to you. You can then use augmented reality to see how the artwork would actually look standing in your room or hanging from your wall. You can share the augmented reality pictures with others (your spouse for instance) to get their approval and finally you can rent the artwork with just the flick of a button.
To get the attention of the potential customers we designed a start-up campaign. We would hang a huge screen on the facade of the building, facing a square. The screen would show the square and everyone on it, but it will trace the movement of people with brightly colored brush strokes. Everyone is assigned a unique color and the speed of your movement defines the width of the stroke. Together people can create random or well planned artworks, heavily depending on the creativity of people passing by. Every 5 to 10 minutes the screen is reset and shows a message urging people to come into the library. Inside Ikea like rooms give people the chance to check out the app and the principale of augmented reality.
