The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge was a winner-takes-all, 132-mile desert race for autonomous vehicles. Volkswagen’s Electronics Research Lab and Stanford University combined forces to build the most sophisticated robot car ever conceived, affectionately named Stanley, and took home the $2,000,000 grand prize.

Challenges

We researched Stanley’s story and presented it to a notoriously distracted audience already inundated with artifacts and information – museum patrons.

“You’ve got two minutes to tell me your story. I’ll be asking the questions. Impress me or I walk.” That’s a little bit what it’s like to be an interactive museum kiosk. Tough job, but someone’s got to design it.

Approach and Lessons Learned

We relied on animation, compelling graphics and a ‘video with voiceover’ storytelling approach to grab and hold viewer attention and hook them into spending some time with Stanley.

Our next decision was to not make them fight for it. We designed the interface with progressively rich layers of information. The top layers were the most general and fully self-presenting.

By designing both the behavior of the interface and how the information was organized, we were able to create an interactive kiosk that respected both the viewer’s curiosity and their time constraints.

The final results can be seen with Stanley himself as he tours museums throughout Asia and Europe.

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