Annenberg PetSpace is a state-of-the-art, community-focused pet adoption facility opened by the philanthropic Annenberg Foundation in Playa Vista, California.
At the entrance to PetSpace, visitors are greeted by PetVision, a giant interactive touch wall installation. I led development of this lively interactive experience where visitors can learn about the adoptable animals in the space, read past visitors' adoption stories, find information about the facility and upcoming events, and contribute their own stories via mobile application.
The work of the interactive is split into two separate applications—one running the math calculations for a custom-built, dynamic circle packing system, and the other handling user input and displaying the large interface elements across three separate CPUs and twelve displays.
These two applications work together to allow hundreds of interactive circles to bubble, collide, rotate en-masse, cluster in groups, and (of course) coalesce into giant animal shapes.
I also created a tool that generates the animal-shaped circle stencils for the interactive. Images can be uploaded, dot pattern arrangements customized and previewed, and the tool generates the application-ready JSON data.