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students. We had a little prototyping lab, where students from these courses could access electronic workbenches and kit. Most universities have a central loan store where students can borrow cameras, microphones and tripods. But this was a specialised resource, where we loaned out things such as hardware for projection mapping or Arduino microcontrollers for connecting to sensors, motors or lights. We noticed a growing interest, which ties into my earlier point about the changing expectations of technology. We put together a proposal to the deans and senior management that we needed a college-wide resource to meet this demand. That’s how we launched the Creative Technology Lab, which focused on creative coding, physical computing – an umbrella term for electronics and microcontrollers – XR, gaming engines and libraries for machine learning or computer vision. Gradually, we integrated elements of AI, projection mapping and creative AV as a whole. We received massive support from the college to do this and they invested heavily in the project. The lab tied in with the subsequent launch of several new, technically focused courses – such as user experience design and other programmes aimed at preparing students for specific industries like visual effects and virtual reality. Many of these courses hoped to produce students who graduate and go straight into the marketplace with the necessary skills right out of the box. It was a highly collaborative effort from everyone involved; the feedback from
when designing and building teaching resources for higher education was something I became passionate about. What are some of your favourite AV projects you’ve worked on? I’ve worked on a number of projects for Qualcomm alongside a great San Diego-based creative agency, but there’s one in particular that was quite interesting. They often wanted us to help them tell the story of a new piece of technology about to be launched. They would look for a way to take sometimes very subtle technical specifications and tell a compelling story around them – because otherwise, they might be presenting just a slideshow of bullet points. One of the significant projects we undertook with Qualcomm involved their latest generation of mobile 5G modems, specifically the launch of millimetre wave 5G technology. The devices used for testing and rapidly developing new chips overnight produced a wealth of debug data. We wanted to use that information to tell a story of performance. We built a dashboard in Unity that sifted through all that data, visualised and presented key metrics on screen. They used it at their annual Tech Summit – where the CEO stood in front of one of the widest screens I’ve seen – with our application running behind him, demonstrating the capability in a visually compelling way. Another exciting project was the founding of the Creative Technology Lab at LCC. This began when I was teaching technical modules for undergraduate and postgraduate interaction design
Qualcomm’s 5G dashboard turned complex specs into a compelling story
Many of these courses hoped to produce students who graduate and go straight into the marketplace with the necessary skills”
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