Snap-a-tron Ultra 2000 Deluxe

Context

During my time at Kaliber, I had the opportunity to design and develop a redesign for their interactive installation, the Snap-a-tron Ultra 2000 Deluxe. 

Their building houses an antique telephone exchange that has been converted into an AI art machine which uses plugs and Polaroids to transfer AI from your screen to your hand. The physical AI machine turns your photo into a digital work of art by ‘prompting’ the AI using the plugs on the control unit.

Read more about it on the casepage.

Design

I examined the current functionality of the Snap-a-tron, its design and its interactions.

For the redesign, I decided to build on the original challenge: how to let people experience AI through touch and feel rather than on a screen.

Research was conducted into the original operation of the telephone exchange and the timeline of interactions linked to the Snap-a-tron. On top of this, a synthwave style was chosen, which fits well with the combination of retro and futuristic elements.

Development

The Snap-a-tron was designed using existing technology, meaning that only a new design for the Arduino connections needed to be implemented.

The technology from the telephone exchange consists of the proprietary Kaliber-build tech stack. You only need a single library to create a web application. It consists of a build stack and server, including React and Express as frameworks. 

The same structure was retained and first made to work for a keyboard to facilitate testing, and then easily transferred to the Arduino connections.

The design includes a grid that serves as feedback for the user, allowing them to see how far the process has progressed. For this, I used the animation tool Rive, which allows you to create interactive animations. It is easier to create the animation in Rive and then simply manipulate it using code.