The James Bond franchise is near and dear to my heart. I had the honor of leading the effort for cinematics for the 2009 video game title, James Bond; Quantum of Solace (QoS). It included Daniel Craig’s gritty reboot of the franchise in Casino Royale and then QoS. This is relevant for this case study because the smart surfaces depicted in this version of MI-6 was a point of departure for this commission. My role on this project was as the agency lead and director of digital experience and engagement. I led the client through discovery interviewing executive stakeholders and senior SMEs to understand every process and tool being used in the space so I could then design the digital layer of solutions to drive productivity in this space.
What we ended up doing is designing a connected space that provides dazzling views and connectivity driven by voice, gesture, and touch.
We were asked to reimagine a busy tech center so it could support two very different moments; to create these vital real-time data views for the employees working on time sensitive remote tasks that connected them with teams all over the state. The other mode is designed to takeover the smart surfaces throughout the space to provide an interactive tour of what the space is used for and why. We collaborated closely with the architecture agency of record, engineering, and IT teams to design, qualify, develop, and commission these solutions.
Feeds included live weather, traffic, and crew data, along with a string of relevant tables, lookups and proprietary feeds and APIs. Utilizing every surface these views were to be projected on floor to ceiling switch glass (* it can transition for transparent to opaque/frosted at the flick of a switch) walls and large LED walls as a connected real-time experience serving everyone on the team in this space.
The second mode of operation supports ad hoc tours where executive stakeholders can takeover the smart glass system. They use voice activation to speak to the operating system, once triggered they can use either gesture or touch to drive the presentation. At key points the presentation wipes from the smart glass wall to the adjoining room where it takes over the other large wall displays in dramatic fashion. This presentation was designed to be an immersive centerpiece to explain to outsiders what this team does. Just as easily as the presentation pulls up, it can be switched back to work mode with a command.
We spent a considerable amount of time creating a unique intuitive design language for the user interface that could be applied across the entire system understanding that some of the outputs from the data feeds and APIs have limited styling. I saw this as a good thing since I wanted it to authentically portray the tools.
