Houston and Bay Area Agency Designs User Interface for Guggenheim’s YouTube Play Digital Gallery

Oct. 27, 2010 - PRLog -- On October 21, 2010, history was made with the YouTube Play exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.  A biennial of creative video, YouTube Play celebrated the world’s most creative online videos.  Participants from all over the world, spanning 91 countries, submitted videos to the YouTube Play competition, and Guggenheim curators selected twenty-five videos from over 23,000 submissions.  YouTube Play showcased all twenty-five videos at the Guggenheim Museum for four days with a UI design
Aniden Interactive created and deployed onto an 85” multi-touch screen and eighteen HP TouchSmart 600 PCs.  

Hewlett-Packard and Intel presented the YouTube Play event at the Guggenheim Museum and also provided hardware for the video installation.  HP has worked closely with Aniden Interactive for over thirteen years; however, this project marked the first collaboration between Google, YouTube, Guggenheim and Aniden.  

Google and HP approached Aniden requesting a UI design for both the 85” multi-touch screen and the HP TouchSmart 600 PCs.  Thrilled to take part in the exhibition, Aniden leaped into action.  

Aniden’s design for the TouchSmart PCs included a lean, elegant touch-based experience, making it possible for users to quickly and easily interact with the wide breadth of content.  “Similar to the online YouTube experience, our goal was to design a gallery experience focused on the creativity of the video.  With the intuitive touch-based interface we created, the videos are presented in context of both their biography and design process, in an inspirational horizontal expanse,” says David Chien, Experience Manager at Aniden Interactive.

For the 85” multi-touch screen, Aniden’s approach was to create a playful large display of videos, showing a glimpse of the 125 shortlist entries in the cloud view, and giving the user the ability to view the 25 finalist videos.  With the 85” multi-touch interaction, users can touch and throw cloud elements.  A single tap launched a three-video player, allowing multiple people to move and view the video.  Videos could also be pinched and zoomed, while a single tap on the background took the user back to cloud view.

Aniden created the visual design of the user interface to complement the event aesthetics.  With a unique screen for each artist, users were able to not only view the winning videos, but also learn about the artist, their mission and how the artist created their work.  

“The gallery at the Guggenheim for YouTube Play was truly unique.  In contrast with virtually all artist presentations in the past, YouTube Play visitors were not prohibited from touching the artwork, but instead were encouraged to do so.  Aniden’s YouTube Play UI design worked seamlessly, providing an interactive experience for all lucky enough to visit the Guggenheim while the work was presented.  The gallery was packed throughout the entire four-day exhibition and Aniden truly rose to the occasion.  The digital design firm worked around the clock to deliver a branded user interface.  It was a great opportunity to see them in action and I look forward to further collaborations in the future," says Chris Di Cesare, head of Creative Programming at Google.

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ANIDEN INTERACTIVE is a Digital Design Agency made up of 3D artists, multimedia designers and user experience experts who help expedite product life cycles and elevate brands. Aniden creates digital prototypes with photorealistic renders and leverages the visual assets onto multimedia videos, technical documentation and user experience for a compelling visual story. Aniden is headquartered in Houston, Texas and is also located in the California Bay Area and Taipei, Taiwan. To learn more, visit www.aniden.com.