Daniel Castano

Imagine you are a maker who needs the client to trigger something with a touch screen. One button that controls a video, sound, light or a whole experience. If you are not a coder, the solution is to hire a developer who will make an entire app just to display a custom button with the logo or image that you want. OSCAR is a GUI creator to control interactive installations without coding, making this process faster, cheaper and scalable.

https://trafalmejo.github.io/OSCar/

Description

With the rise of the capacitive screens market since 2007 due to the arrival of smartphones, many products, and their uses have changed. We are now used to press virtual buttons and slide virtual faders on touchscreens that control features on our computers, thermostats, media players, and more.
Virtual interfaces have increased in number in the last 10 years, evolving, and generating specialized concepts and roles we didn’t consider before, as UI/UX design, responsiveness, and front-development. Also, multiple tools have been designed to facilitate their design and implementation, spreading their use across industries.
Museums, galleries, AV companies, and marketing agencies are implementing more multimedia installations to communicate concepts in engaging ways to their audiences. Many of these interactive installations have decided to rely on touchscreens to display and trigger their content, asking for the user to include their input to control the outcome and personalize the experience.

However, the process to create one of these interfaces of control is still complicated even if it is a simple button with an image, and not many people are able to implement it. Let’s take for example:

Imagine you are part of an exhibit design company. You and your team are in charge of designing a piece to explain the states of matter to children. You have three animations explaining the concepts and just one screen to display the content. You want the kids to control what they watch and allow them to participate actively in the installation. Your team is able to manage the video clips but the problem comes when you have to design a friendly graphical interface for the children to trigger the videos they want to play. In the current industry, this interface would have to be outsourced no matter how simple it is, because it will require producers, designers, and developers.
OSCAR is intended to simplify the process of implementation of these interfaces for end users, in this case, children and visitors.

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Thesis