watch the reel below!

Genesis is a novel about a dystopian future written by Bernard Beckett. The entire story takes place in an exam room as a young candidate who takes an examination to qualify for admittance into the future society’s ruling body, The Academy. A brilliant student, must face a trio of examiners for a four-hour exam. The student analyzed a man's life who lived from 2058 to 2077 and was a central figure in the nation’s history. This figure was an integral step in the development of conscious artificially intelligent beings. In an effort to not give away too much of the plot, a twist happens down the road which changes our whole understanding of the dystopian future society. 

This project was done in collaboration with peer and friend Katelyn Sipek while we completed our final semester of the Bachelors of Fine Arts program at CSULB. We conceptualized and designed a system of devices and user interfaces that could accompany this story. The core of the story involves the candidates surface which focuses on a timeline to look back at history. The examiners also each have a surface to interact with while documenting the examination. There are some other smaller interfaces created which appear within the story such as a gun-targeting system and and interface to navigate the settings of an AI android. 

 
 

So much inspiration

 

There is a plethora of spectacular future UI designs created with a main purpose to awe an audience with the beauty and complexity of future technology. Due to the nature of movies allowing viewers a very limited look at interfaces used within a film, many designs do not entirely make sense from a UX standpoint. This realization created a desire to build designs for this reel that were both beautiful and functional ... functional to the best of our understanding. Not only was inspiration drawn from existing films containing future UI, but real-life systems, such as all the controls within a cockpit, were studied closely in order to create more functional designs. 

 

 

The decision to use a hexagonal grid was made because every screen utilized by the user is within arms reach and far corners cause the user to lean and reach for elements which might be too far for their arm span. Sketching was essential in this process in order to explore various shapes that could be created from this less-familiar grid. The interfaces described throughout the novel gave the opportunity to design very intricate systems, which also presented moments when the UX took a back seat to the visual appeal of the designs. This was a purposeful decision since the final product was a video rather than a functional product. 

 

Final Interface Designs

 

Tabletop surface structured around a central timeline. 

Floating interface expanding from the countdown clock for accessing historical audio files. 

Floating interface for viewing written historical media.

Interviewers surface for monitoring the student being tested. 

Interface for personal student tablet. 

Interface for monitoring and editing settings for an AI being. 

 
 

 
 

CSULB BFA Spring of 2014 Senior Show

This project was a part of the BFA Spring of 2014 Senior Show. Cheryl's graduating year. Take a look through some photos from the opening night.