The Challenge
In 2016 we teamed up with Canon to work on a VR-focused product. The initial intention was to explore the technology, look for opportunities to innovate existing products and services, and ultimately to spark interest within the photography community in general and the Canon community in particular.
The Approach
Photography is a great storytelling medium, capable of relaying both facts and emotions. To make sure we didn’t lose this in the product we ended up creating, we had to make sure we emphasised exploration and the joy of discovery. Instead of locking users into a single path when reliving their memories or “visual stories”, we decided to break down a story into smaller groups of photos, illustrating its most memorable parts, leaving space for exploration of individual groups, without imposing a specific order on the user.
Beyond photography
To ‘fill in the gaps’, elicit stronger responses and simply make it more fun, we weaved in content generated from Canon’s metadata and object analysis software, amongst the photos. Time and GPS data, combined with the social media content, allow for richer stories with travel routes, landmarks, weather reports, social profiles, quotes from people involved and more.
Exploring the story
With the story broken into smaller parts and enriched with other related content, we were left with our biggest challenge; how to use all three dimensions of VR to the fullest, whilst consuming content that is mostly two-dimensional.
Each part of the story was represented by a ‘cloud’ of photos and other related content, placed around a user in a three-dimensional space, allowing them to look around and explore the content freely. The navigation between different parts of the story was designed to be linear — back and forth — and based on the flow of time.
The Deliverables
The prototype of the product was presented at Photokina 2016 - the largest international trade fair in the world of photography. The feedback during the fair (and afterwards), was very positive and inspiring; both the concept and its realisation were met with curiosity and excitement among the Photokina community and navigating through a story proved to be intuitive.
Closing the Engagement
The prototype got people talking. Canon’s efforts to branch out into a new domain were met with excitement and raised the question “Where will it go from here?”. Well, we guess that only the future will tell!
As for the team, it was a great experience designing a real product for VR that definitively left us with a taste for more .
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