Case study / Unity + physical computing
Innovation Hives.
Two interactive environments made Accenture's research something visitors could explore through touch, movement, voice, and light.
Accenture / Future Colossal · Lead creative technologist on Smart Living and Finance Forward · Unity, C#, UDP, Arduino, MadMapper, lighting integration
Situation → Task
Turn research into a room people could use.
Accenture's New York Innovation Hives were eight installations about future industries. Working at Future Colossal, I led the technology for two of them: Smart Living and Finance Forward. The challenge was to make dense ideas legible to visitors while keeping many screens, sensors, input devices, and lighting cues in sync.
I translated each experience concept into interaction states, application logic, and connections between physical hardware and digital media. The first working version was delivered within a month; the following month was used to refine it with client feedback.
The finished experience
A responsive physical environment.
The demo shows the wider Innovation Hives environment. The diagrams and photographs below focus on the two installations I led within Future Colossal's larger team effort.
Action / 01
Smart Living.
Visitors explored city and sustainability stories on a Pufferfish spherical touchscreen. Touching a location changed content on two large displays and lit corresponding points on a custom steel map of New York City.
I designed the communication path from the globe into the Unity experience and lighting system, built real-time heatmap visuals and mapped light content in MadMapper. Transparent animation playback required additional encoding work with ffmpeg and HAP so the visuals would display as intended.
Visitor interaction / simplified
One touch, several coordinated responses.
- 01
Explore the globe
A visitor touches a location or story on the spherical display.
- 02
Send the state
The globe passes interaction data to the Unity application over UDP.
- 03
Select media
Unity changes visual content on the surrounding displays.
- 04
Light the map
Mapped LED cues highlight the matching New York location.
View the original Smart Living system diagram +
Action / 02
Finance Forward.
A physical dial and voice commands let visitors move through financial themes. A stock ticker, ten-screen content system, and color-coded lighting turned changes in topic into visible changes across the room.
I integrated live stock data through the TD Ameritrade API, used Arduino for dial input and Microsoft Speech Recognition for voice input, and built a category manager to route content by theme and trigger. MadMapper coordinated content across the screens.
Visitor interaction / simplified
Dial or voice, one shared content state.
- 01
Choose a theme
A visitor turns the dial or speaks a supported command.
- 02
Resolve the input
Arduino or speech recognition passes an event into the experience.
- 03
Update the category
Application logic selects the relevant story and live stock context.
- 04
Respond in the room
Screen content, ticker, and lighting cues change together.
View the original Finance Forward system diagram +
Result + role
Two working exhibits, built with a team.
Smart Living and Finance Forward were delivered as two of the eight installations in Accenture's New York Innovation Hives. The work let visitors engage with the research through direct, responsive interactions rather than a presentation alone.
My role was lead creative technologist on these two exhibits while at Future Colossal. I owned the interaction and technical implementation described above, worked with the Pufferfish team on the globe integration, and documented the systems for future team use. Concept, fabrication, content, and production were collaborative work within the wider Future Colossal project.