The Making Of
STAR WARS: A FORCE AWAKENS
APPROACH
Our design team set out to create a digital experience that could satisfy the high expectations of Star Wars fans, grounding our approach in the legacy of the ‘Making Of’ books. Like the traditional artifact, we wanted this experience to offer a linear path, but also allow users to extend, customize, and re-imagine the elements of the narrative.
Our research into the fans revealed that access to minute details, both written and visual was a key expectation and that extending their knowledge about the production of the movie was a primary job to be done.
We factored these needs into our earliest ideation and thought about ways to extend the written word through visualizations and interactions.
One of the first concepts I brought to the team was an homage to 1977 Eames film, Powers of Ten. My idea centered around the tablet as a vehicle for (metaphorically) zooming through space and time.
The story would be told from a omniscient point of view, starting out in space, then zooming down into a home on Earth, where a parent and child explore the application. The camera then passes through the plane of the tablet zooming exponentially into the Star Wars universe.
The association between the Eames film and this application is appropriate because of the exponential zooming in and out that the user experiences when engaging with their memories and the time spent making new memories.
Sketching & INSPIRATION
We sketched and brought in examples of visual inspiration to kick off the ideation process for page layouts and interactions.
Data Visualization
We were inspired by data viz as a way to represent the vast catalog of information and assets. These presentations alongside the text would help the reader not only better understand the story but could also generate new associations and relationships for the invested fans.
Layered Timelines
We knew that timelines would provide a rich vehicle for organizing and overlaying information related to the making-of process. New views — such as intersecting the production timeline and character milestones could be created and explored.
Faceted Character Mosaics
Another early concept was faceted mosaics that would enable the user to explore the character through a construction of related imagery. Playing on the idea of levels of zoom, users can see the character at a fully zoomed out level but also drill down to individual assets to view and read in-depth more about the character, or actor.
PROTOTYPING
We moved into a prototyping phase with low and high fidelity outputs as we started sharing the work with our client.
Motion Studies
We had 3 designers working part time on this project and we were distributed on the East and West coasts. To facilitate better communication we each leveraged our different skills in prototyping. One of the early concepts I proposed “Responsive Rivers” showed how the text could respond to the user’s interaction with images or media, re-orienting the reading priority from linear text to less structured visual exploration.
Motion studies helped my team understand the sequence of interactions better than static comps alone. They also spur greater collaboration as the initial idea evolved as other designers built upon and refined the concept.
Lo-Fi Models
We explored several VR experiences to bring the user into the Star Wars universe. To expedite the concept for stakeholders, we built paper prototypes to simulate the possibilities. One concept was to leverage VR to de-construct key scenes, allowing the reader to explore the surrounding ecosystem.
STORYBOARDS
The final deliverable would be a short video to showcase the concepts and tell a story about our product vision. To capture the sequences we used storyboards with increasing levels of fidelity.
