Las Vegas Springs Preserve Smart Guide

Yes indeed kids, I was designing location-aware, touch-screen interfaces, before it was cool.
The Las Vegas Springs Preserve is a massive edutainment destination housing four interactive-media-enhanced galleries that engage visitors in the history of Las Vegas and the future of sustainable desert living. The exhibit designers contacted my friend and long-time collaborator Karen Reed about creating a handheld guide that would augment the visitor experience with multimedia exhibit information and wayfinding assistance. She called on me and the rest of the IPK team to tackle the project, along with Spotlight Mobile, a Portland-based company doing some interesting work with location-aware museum tours.

We met with curators and exhibit designers to create an initial prototype which outlined the key features. We also spent a lot of time determining an optimum amount of interaction that would allow the user to enjoy the content of the handheld guide while also taking in all the sights and sounds the Springs Preserve had to offer.

Before Apple gave us all the answers in the form of the iPhone, we found ourselves trying to solve problems like “What’s the minimum size for a button that you need to tap with your thumb?” and “What’s the best way to display a person’s location when you’re not exactly sure where it is?” The whole time we were saying, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could install a GPS, an accelerometer and a compass in this thing? Or if only we could get rid of these scroll buttons and just let the person swipe their finger to move the page up and down.”

Working within the limitations of a Windows Mobile-based device running Flash, we developed a user-friendly interface designed for easy, on-the-go operation. The device knew when a person had entered a particular room and presented them with relevant content such as slideshows, games and videos that could either be experienced on the spot or saved for later. Location-aware maps brought the tour full circle, enabling touchscreen wayfinding from anywhere on the Preserve.

I would love to see what we might have come up with if we were to tackle this project using the technology that has evolved over the last few years.