Be into Your MOMENT

Platform Design, Concept Design

Duration

2019 Fall, 1 month

Overview

Thanks to 5G's high-speed internet connection, we cooked a platform concept for people to access and use a service (app) without search-and-download time. This concept can be applied to many environments like homes, restaurants, stores, and even bus stops.
It is worthwhile to mention that people don't have to own a very high-end product to run it. On this platform, all heavy computing is finished on the cloud and all contents are streaming videos from the server but still interactive.

My Contributions

I was one of the core designers of this project. We developed the idea from scratch, including the design of the platform and exciting scenarios.
At the end of this project, we built a live prototype to demonstrate to our potential investors. This project helped us to hit the milestone of the Series B round.

Based on edge computing

All contents are generated from the cloud, so a personal device doesn't need a powerful CPU and becomes a simple content viewer.

If you want to know more about it

While the internet speed is going way faster than in the past, more content can be rendered in real-time and sent to local devices from a faraway cloud server. A similar service is Stadia, a cloud gaming console by Google.
In our imagination (which is becoming the future), the future personal device works as a video player. All the UI and contents are rendered into one video but the video is interactive so that we interact with it just like using a normal app.

Scenario

A scenario is a whole journey of doing something. For example, riding a bus to work, staying at home and chilling, shopping in a mall, or watching a basketball game in STAPLES Center.
It is always fun to enjoy every moment in one's life. But we only get to experience a little part of it if we go to an unfamiliar place for the first time. For example, you need to find the seats in a ball game and it would be a little bit challenging on your first time visiting the place. Everything is just fresh.

The first time matters.
How to make people naturally interact with a new moment?

One design fits all

Because people may encounter a specific MOMENT only for one time, we wanted to reduce learning effort and make every first time use a happy experience. To achieve that, we thought all MOMENTs could share one general concept of UI structure but still keep the space for their abundant and unique content.

Wayfinding

I started to think about how I got to know a new place when I just walked into it. My answer was wayfinding. Signages, by a corner, on the floor, right before stairs, tell me where I am and what is waiting for upfront. Well-designed signage lets people understand it naturally and is full of rich information at the same time.

Okay!
We had some ideas to build the UI.

The uniform

People are doing many things and visiting many places a day. Therefore, we wanted to create a universal UI language for all the MOMENTs to follow so that users may feel no difficulties using a new MOMENT. On top of that, we also thought that with this approach MOMENT developers could quickly adapt their websites to this platform.
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• Home: some places are visited more than once. Hence, every MOMENT can be remembered on the device for the future. Users can switch the active MOMENT by preference.
• Nearby MOMENT: nearby MOMENTs will automatically appear on the home screen. With accurate device localization, you should never miss an available MOMENT nearby.
• MOMENT UI: the main screen of a MOMENT consists of multiple stripes. A stripe is like a destination sign printed in a signage system. The length of a stripe depends on its content but all stripes are the same height. Viewing stripes is similar to viewing a table of contents in a book. With a quick glance, you could understand what is inside this MOMENT.

Be distinctive

Stripes are more than a table of contents. MOMENT providers have all the flexibility to visualize their stripes and create fully interactive expanded views for all stripes. An expanded view (unfolded stripe) could show details of nearby restaurants, a day pass for an amusement park, or a live streaming video for a baseball game.

Similar but customized

The Stripes work as signage, so people can immediately understand their surroundings through the Stripes. On each Stripe, some content already shows itself to let the user know what kind of service and information is under the Stripe. Therefore, users do not have to spend much time trying each Stripe out.

Nearby MOMENT
pops up

Nearby MOMENTs will automatically show on the home screen.

Switch between MOMENTs

Go to the home screen and pick a MOMENT.

View more of a stripe

Press on a stripe you will see more content of it.

Sense the world deeper.

MOMENT is not replacing the physical world

Experiencing every moment in our life brings pleasure and energy. We don't want to take that feeling from people. When you are watching a baseball game, we surely want you to get into it, shout out for every home run, and not feel distracted by other matters. Based on this idea, we believe a MOMENT's mission is to help people interact with their surroundings more efficiently so that people can enjoy their moments better.

Takeaway

Speaking to design, I believe we should not build from zero. We learn from people's everyday life and good designs that are already surrounding us.
It was a wonderful experience to design a general container for a variety of information from different life scenarios.
This design did earn us funding from investors by picturing a coming future of the 5G era. However, it was only a baby step. For such a service platform to come alive, there would be way more steps to make for landing this project, such as making a more solid business model and finding sponsors and partners.