Exploring Pueblo Pottery

UX Design Lead

Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico

Time: 2018-2019

Overview

Pottery design is a seminal part of the culture and art of first peoples of the American Southwest, and I had the privilege to design a unique, first-of-its-kind interactive exhibit that aimed to use projection mapping technology to explore and open up the world of indigenous pottery design. Working with Acoma pueblo artist Michelle Lowden, we created an interactive application that allowed users to explore, read about, and then experience a myriad of designs from Acoma pueblo, and see those designs projected onto a large oja jar specially built for the project.

The application itself was a simple interactive content viewer where visitors could browse and explore unique designs, read about their meaning and significance, and see that design projected onto a 3D model of the pot within the application. This allows the application to function as a portable exhibit without the physical model, if the projection setup cannot be achieved in a certain space.

The projection itself is a 360-degree mapping utilizing four projectors placed north, south, east, and west of the physical pot model. Using careful warping techniques, a seamless 360 image was achieved with minimal distortion.

The stunning artwork created by Lowden was then brought to life with subtle animation to enliven the artwork once it was projected. Visitors could also rotate the artwork on the model to be able to view all the artwork's nuances from their vantage point at the touchscreen application.

"Exploring Pueblo Pottery" has gone on to receive a prestigious Global Design Merit Award for interactive experiences from SEGD, as well as receiving a 2019 German Design Award, and is the recipient of a Gold 2019 APEX Award in the Experiential Design & Planning category.