UX Design Project - Palm

Palm is an art installation put into the VALA Eastside Gallery for their exhibit “Art in Motion.” I teamed up with the artist Alex Bennett through our connection at DigiPen to create an art installation using the Xbox Kinect and Unity. He made art assets for this project following my specifications that I used to create the rest of the project.

The tree moves and sways in the ocean breeze with the purpose of relaxing the user and aiding in meditation. Soothing music faded in and out based on the active user and birds flew in paths created by each of your hands to create a sense of awareness for the user of their physical self.

The system accounts for the prominent errors and body tracking bugs present in the Xbox Kinect base development kit, so I had to write my own. Multiple users are not supported, so creating the framework to deal with transitions between primary tracked users was added to avoid immersion breaks.

I also had to make sure that there were limits to how far the tree could bend without the whole display breaking the relaxing atmosphere that I was looking for users to experience. By focusing on this as a platform to enhance meditation, I used my time using Alex’s UI assets to create a smooth,