Union Station: Interactive Timeline Final

For project two I was partnered with Jessie Ren to develop an interactive timeline for a hypothetical 100 year exhibition of Union Station. Every group was given a different decade to showcase specific content, Jessie and I had 80's. During the initial stages of the project we quickly learned that for most of the 80's Union Station was shut down, which was an immediate obstacle to resolve. After much consideration we took George Guastello's statement to heart that Union Station is the people's house, it is a reflection of the people and the times. The 80's were characterized for the technological revolution, the "Me, Me, Me, Generation", and binge buying. We felt that because American culture became high on the technological hype and mostly about the individual rather than community it only made sense for Union Station to be in such disarray. In our timeline we decided to represent both national events with local events to represent a correlation between the two.

Union Station: Wireframe Directions

From our previous phase, Jessie and I made some major changes in the direction of our narrative. Originally, the interface was very much linear in regards to the nostalgic train riding process. During this revision process we struggled to maintain the train experience through the elements of the ticket, clocks and etc. while allowing for a more non-linear interface. We both wanted to keep the ticket as entry point to the experience, so we resolved this issue by allowing the timeline to sit on the back of the ticket. The next challenge we encountered was the issue of our so called "information graphic." We previously had horizontal train lines, which moved up and down without purpose. In order to further emphasize our story of how trains became insignificant in relationship to new developing technology, we divided the our train tracks into two categories: union station details and national details. The ups and downs allude to the idea of progression and digression in a loose manner.

Direction 01:

Direction 02:

Union Station: Wireframe Concepting

In developing our concepts for Union Station, Jessie Ren and I sought out to recreate the journey and nostalgia of riding the train in our first approach. The user would begin the experience by receiving a ticket at the ticket booth, then prompted to choose a decade while in the waiting hall. Lastly the user will be taken to the platform where the content of the decade will reside. The user will use the train as a scroll bar for various content. In addition, the gentleman at the ticket booth would act as a tour guide to help clarify directions and to change decades.

Direction 01 

In our second approach, we wanted to focus on the concept of turning back the hands of time. The old clock is very iconic of Union Station as well as relative to time. In order to choose a decade, the user would literally drag the hand to the desired decade. After the decade has been selected, the imagery in the background would change to a photo from the time period as the clock would slide upwards out of the frame. The image would have various hot spots that the user can interact with to access more content about the time.

Direction 02

Revision of Direction 01: