In a team of 5 designers and technologists, we conceptualized, designed, and created a multi-modal, interactive art installation for the Boerenkerkhof (farmers' cemetery) park in the city of Enschede, NL. This project was part of an Interaction Design course at the University of Twente.

This project was brought to the University by the city, who wanted to attract more visitors and revamp this old cemetery which was recently turned into park. To this end, we partnered with the local Enschede historical society to find stories from the city and the Boerenkerkhof, that we might incorporate into our installation.

Through several cycles of ideation and rapid prototyping, working with a representative from the city and the historical society, we developed an installation to help visitors discover and connect with current and past stories of the city and it's residents.

One of the interesting experiments for this project, was to design from a narrative point of view. We worked with a local professor, as well as a visiting artist/instructor from Eindhoven, to explore the potentials of using a narrative design process for creating compelling interactive experiences.

The final installation involved three crank-boxes, which each controlled an element of narrative along a spectrum: current-past, happy-sad, exciting-boring. Using these cranks, and an interactive map of the park, up to three people could explore current and past histories of the city and its residents.

I am still in contact with both the professor of this course, and the visiting instructor, in efforts to publish some of the findings from this process. We are exploring the design and prototyping process we used to design, its relationship to the specific place in Enschede, and how that can be generalized into design and design-teaching guidelines.