A Flexible, Touchfree Interactive Platform for Exhibiting Physical and Digital Student Works in …

We present a case study sharing the design and development process for a new interactive exhibit space at the North Carolina State University Libraries, called the Innovation Studio. The Libraries collaborated with Relative Scale of Raleigh, NC to realize an experience built around interactive projection, designed as a lightweight and mostly “touchfree” approach to digital interactives. This interaction design, and the content platform that underlies it, facilitate dynamic exhibition in a multi-use space—one that is central to a larger transformation happening in the newly renovated Hill Library. The Innovation Studio exhibition platform affords a new approach to collecting student work (in both digital and physical form) and sharing their stories, further situating the library as a forum and community space. In designing for flexibility—the exhibits will often need to be removed so the Studio can be used for teaching—interactive projection won out over bulky touch tables, leading to a “touchfree” approach that is also uniquely ready for the shift in user experience caused by COVID-19. We’ll share our technical process of UX design, prototyping, concept development and the interplay between NC State & Relative Scale; and particularly focus on the challenges of interaction design and our content model, which allows for different types of works (digital, physical, and hybrid) and the rich diversity of a University community.