[080208] The touch screen based "Deco Design Tool" enables users to create virtual designs and have them applied to - in this case - a virtual storage box. The client, Curver (manufacturer of plastic home products) ordered the tool to generate attention and sales leads at trade fairs.

We were presented with the project at the Unite 2007 conference in San Fransisco, where we met Sivan Law-Yone Gilad, CEO of Isreali visual effects company D4. He told us about it and we ended up collaborating on doing the tool for Curver for the Ambiente Consumer Goods fair in Frankfurt - the largest of it's kind in the world.

The potential benefits are also in making it a design tool for Curver where their designers and/or clients can experiment with visuals in various themes and create patterns for their products, so it's a proof of concept as well as a promotional product.

Description
The user can choose from four different "design themes". These themes can then be explored on a touchscreen and color, size, lighting and composition can be modified by the user. When the user is satisfied the image is wrapped on a 3D Deco box and the result is printed for the user to take with them. The design themes are:

• Organic: A very soft and abstract theme, with a cell like look to it. Cells can be drawn by touching the screen
  
• Scattered Objects: Pulsating crystal like objects float around in a space. The objects can be dragged around and placed by the user.
  
• City: A cityscape is growing continuously before the user. Focus can be shifted by clicking buildings
  
• Space: Planets and asteroids drift around in space. They can be dragged and placed by the user.

For all themes, color, light and point of view can be changed

• Client: Curver. "Curver develops user-friendly plastic home products to support the demands of modern living"
  
• Occation: Ambiente Consumer Goods fair in Frankfurt
  
• Main contractor: D4, Israeli visual effects company
  
• Concept, visual design, interaction design: D4 and shiftcontrol
  Programming, GUI, workflow: shiftcontrol
  
• Technologies: Unity, Processing, Troll Touch Screen, OS X Automator (for printing)

Curious?
For more info on this project, please contact founding partner Patrik Svensson, +45 29 80 00 95, office@shiftcontrol.dk