Letting Go

I know what this is going to sound like, but there’s no way to get around it. To be great at designing holograms you have to let go of the past. Completely.

Envisioning breakthrough experiences will only come when you free your mind of all the bias, process, constraints, assumptions, and assertions you currently work within. To truly embrace the future takes the courage to turn your back on the past and its baggage. It really doesn’t apply anymore. This is a whole new deal.

We can’t drag the mistakes of the past into the dawn of a new era.

What we can do with the past is remember the lessons we learned along the way to getting here. Just do it. Trying and failing is natural. Practicing is nonnegotiable. People will always surprise you. There’s a million of those hard-earned lessons to pull from. Just don’t think that the mountain of knowledge you have from that previous era still applies. It doesn’t. For all intents and purposes, you are starting over.

Just like a skateboarder learning how to snowboard for the first time, there are some basics that are universal to help you make the leap (falling hard, for example), but for the most part we are explorers charting our own path through the next frontier. So little is known about what’s “right” for this new space, it is ridiculous to think we’ll have this figured anytime soon.

The best we can do is relax, let go, and drop in.

Seeing the World

Another key mindshift to make is in how we perceive our environment and everything in it.

The envisioning process starts with consciously observing the world around you. Sounds obvious, but trust me, it’s not that simple. It takes practice to be very observant and conscious of how things appear and behave in the real world. There are so many subtleties, so much incredible detail. Most of it is lost on us each day. Just whizzes right by.

Try it for yourself. Go outside and pick anything natural to look at. What you’ll notice if you allow yourself time to truly see it, is an almost impossible to comprehend amount of beauty, color, shape, composition, material, lighting, and shadow. So many aspects to consider. How do we move through our lives without noticing all this?

Now compare the natural to man-made objects. The patterns are different, but in some cases just as beautiful. We humans are not without talent. Yet in other cases, the things people make are hardly worth a second look.

The day you start trying to really see the small things we often overlook is the day a whole new universe of possibilities opens up to you. In those moments you gain the skill and clarity to envision breakthrough interactions. Why? Intently trying to see details frees the mind from the current condition and lets us focus. What a gift to not use more often.

A former Design manager of mine taught me an easy exercise that brings the value of purposeful seeing to light almost immediately. He challenged me to randomly choose something new to deeply look at on the way to work each day. That could be a leaf, a tree, a building, a person, something in a store window, an animal – it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you identify an aspect of the entity that you never noticed before. And if you continue to do this exercise every time you go somewhere, you’ll soon realize that we’re almost always on autopilot when it comes to our environment.

Notice the incredible amount of detail in the fur icing of these cupcake creatures

Ask any experienced Designer how they get better at their craft and they’ll tell you a big part is developing the ability to recall how things look and act when they’re not right in front of you. It’s something to constantly work on since it’s a fundamental and indispensable skill in this field.

Time to break ourselves of the ridiculous habit of taking our physical world for granted.

Being the World

Understanding how people and things feel and what motivates their actions (and reactions) is invaluable to designing breakthrough experiences. I equate that to being them. We need to become the holograms we design to genuinely understand the world they exist in. That takes some empathy, immersion, and creative thinking to pull off.

A bit later in the book we’ll dig into a very fun and effective technique to gain insight into how it feels to be something else. We’ll literally become a hologram through casual acting and improvisation. Putting ourselves and our collaborators into situations where we are physically interacting with holograms and the space they inhabit gives us feedback that no real-time telemetry system or instrumentation of any kind yields – the human factor. Better understanding feelings and emotions play a huge role in taking the perspective of someone or something else in our envisioning process.

For now, let’s focus on a few key aspects of becoming what we are modeling.

Empathy can be built by simply observing how things behave in their natural environments and seeing if we can put ourselves in their places. Start watching birds takeoff and land out your window. Quietly observe how your child plays with their pet. Try contemplating what that lamp thinks about all day as it collects dust. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a while and see how they’d view you through their eyes.

Actions speak louder than words they say. They are the result of stimulus. Regardless of the thing you pick to observe, you’ll notice that everything behaves in its own way. Even more interesting is how they act when they’re engaged. Getting in tune with how state changes work and the actions they elicit will help us nail the design experiences that truly move us. Remember that holograms can be as active or passive as you want them to be. Shifting from one state to another heightens our awareness. That’s when things get real. Signature moments emerge from these shifts and subsequent actions.

Behavior is a complex thing to tackle in preliminary design exercises. We know there’s both an instinctual and learned part of behavior. I’m not even going there. It’s enough for now to start off just being a good observer of basic behavior and perhaps the motivation behind it. We need holograms to behave in expected ways given familiar situations. Yet, there’s an opportunity to have them surprise us when we least expect it. Behavioral modification is completely possible using machine learning and artificial intelligence, so why not think about how things can learn over time to enhance the experience.

Motion is precisely why we needed to invent slow motion. It’s utterly fascinating how much we miss of even the simplest motions when they happen at full speed. Think about those ultra-slow motion shots of bees landing on flowers or wild beasts attacking each other. Riveting. Never mind understanding how the actual physics work, just watching all the movement closely is insanely intense. We could spend years studying the intricacies of movement, but for our work with envisioning it suffices to be able to remember and depict approximately how things move.

Finding Inspiration

Training your mind to look deeply into the real world is only half of the envisioning equation — the other half is the ability to come up with fresh ideas on demand.

Spontaneous idea generation is a bit tougher than it sounds because you need a certain amount of inspiration to spark the imagination. To find that inspiration at will, you’ll have to let your mind wander more than usual. It’s not like a casual daydream though. It’s a purposeful, directed conjuring of imaginary things on a regular basis. Perpetual hallucination is a bit too far. Seeing the unexpected from time to time is just right.

We’ll use the real world for inspiration whenever we can (because it’s right there). Let’s start practicing that by looking around wherever we happen to be right now. People will probably think you’re weird for staring blankly into space, waiting for something to move you, but whatever. Pretty soon holograms will start materializing out of nowhere. Your imagination makes them appear just as you want them to be, and perhaps even more intriguing than we’d ever be able to produce. Never mind the skepticism. Conjure at will. You’ll find that once you start exercising that imagination muscle it gets to be second nature and incredibly fun.

The ideas for many of the best holographic experiences come from ordinary objects and situations in the real world, not the digital realm.

Hearing that we’ll mostly use the physical world for inspiration can be counter-intuitive and a bit off-putting to the new holographic designer of digital objects, but it’s true. You’ll realize that even the wildest digital ideas are somehow rooted in the physical world. That’s how our minds work. We’re observers and extrapolators.

Amazing how we can find inspiration even in the most mundane of places.

INSPIRATION EXERCISE #1 - TRANSITION

Let’s take this very ordinary scene from a doctor’s waiting room for example. What unexpected things can you imagine happening within this space?

What if that sea turtle wasn’t trapped behind the glass?

You could easily imagine that giant sea turtle being shown in the television screen somehow escaping and starting to swim through the waiting room air right in front of us. Our minds make that relatively easy to do. But, how would it move exactly? What color would it be? Where are its friends? What does it sound like? Is its shell clean or beat up? How fast does it move? Does it look realistic or more like a garbled video projection?

Chances are unless you live in a region where sea turtles come up onto the beach to sun themselves, you’d be hard pressed to answer any of those questions. Conversely, if you started practicing being truly observant of things in the physical world, next time you were driving along a beach road in Hawaii and saw one of these magnificent creatures parked on a rock in the sun you’d surely be mentally cataloguing all of the details of their appearance and behavior for the day when you were asked to describe it all as a hologram.

Regardless of whether you every get to see a giant turtle in person or not, remember that everywhere you go is another new opportunity to observe and dig into the possibilities.

INSPIRATION EXERCISE #2 - TRANSFORMATION

Let’s practice that envisioning inspiration exercise again. This time we’ll use something that’s inanimate as our subject and see if we can bring it life.

What do you see when you look up at this ordinary emergency light fixture?

This emergency light fixture looks like what to you?

Right! It’s a chameleon-like robot. I bet you can imagine it leaping down off the wall and jumping around on the floor with you just like charming chameleon robots do, right? OK, didn’t think so. But, I saw it. And it was awesome.

Now, I can’t see anything but that chameleon creature when I look at that light fixture. It has become something memorable and fun to me. Would be easy to act out how this thing behaves on the floor, or even quickly sketch out what it looks like. Of course, it is. And all of that is possible because my imagination took me to the place of thinking this was real enough to see without the aid of any technology. Our brains are amazing things, indeed.

Now for the real question. Could I describe this vision and experience to other people? Would they believe me? Could they see it, too?

Chances are you would convincing describe what you’ve seen well enough for others to see it, too. Wouldn’t necessarily be your exact vision, but close enough to enjoy talking about together.

INSPIRATION EXERCISE #3 - APPEARING

One more time. There are situations where you encounter somewhat empty spaces and start to wonder what types of holograms could fill them. Perhaps it’s the lack of people. Or maybe something just feels off. Whatever it is, your mind will start to fill in empty spaces with things that seem to appear out of nowhere. One minute the space is empty. The next it’s full of something that clearly was not there before.

Let’s give this a try. What do you imagine is in the atrium beyond the glass of this lobby?

What hologram do you see behind the glass wall? Me too ;-)

Correct! There’s a dinosaur as big as a house right on the other side of the lobby glass wall. It keeps shuffling, taking little steps, shaking its head around, and occasionally roaring louder than I’m ready for between bites of the leaves on the trees. Guess it’s hungry. For me.

Oh, wait. You weren’t seeing that until I mentioned it? My bad. What was there? OK. You went a different direction on this one. And that’s fantastic.

Think you get the idea. Holograms can be anywhere. Holograms can be anything.

Wherever you happen to be throughout the day, take the opportunity to imagine what’s missing from the space you are in or what would be a really pleasant surprise to encounter there. You’d be shocked at where your imagination takes you without trying very hard. The key is to let your mind go where it wants to, just like when you were a young kid. This is all part of the mindshift we need to make to get comfortable envisioning holograms in the real world.

Adding or Augmenting

One of the finer points of envisioning is how holograms are used within a space.

Making whatever you desire appear on demand gets to be easy over time, but there is a bit more to this space filling than merely conjuring at will. You want to be thoughtful and purposeful in how the different holographic elements are combined within a room. Although we need to consider their position and layout, it’s more interesting to talk about their function and presence.

Two methods of injecting holograms into a space are adding and augmenting . To me, these are quite different and used for particular reasons. Some would consider the difference between them a very subtle distinction, so it’s worth talking about here.

Augmenting existing things with holograms should enhance them. It’s a great effect to see something floating on or near an “ordinary” thing, but not all that shocking given the number of times this is depicted in sci-fi movies. In the real world you’ll see good examples of this method in many Augmented Reality (AR) systems, where they typically layer additional information on top of the real world to help you have a better understanding of something. That’s cool, but I actually find that pretty boring and an old vision of how to use this technology.

Given the ability to accurately place holographic objects on and near people and objects gives up the chance to do more than tether floating information cards to things. We can explore what it means to augment the real world with amazing new elements.

“Augmenting” with holograms enhances an existing person or object

The important part to note is that augmenting amplifies what’s already there. We’re not putting an entirely new thing into a space, we are supplementing what we can already see.

Adding new elements to a space using holograms will generally be more of a surprise to people, which is a great opportunity to blow people’s minds. They probably weren’t expecting something to appear in that way, so it’s all new to them. The trick is mixing holograms into the real world in such a way that truly feels integrated and right. Even with great tools and some experience, that’s easier said than done.

Choosing to add a hologram to a space changes that environment digitally, sometimes in a dramatic fashion.

“Adding” holograms to an environment brings in independent new elements

Key with adding is that the object or character is self-contained and not reliant upon an existing element to exist. Added holograms blend in and are perfectly fine as tiny bumble bees as well as huge automobiles. The effect of adding is to bring something new to interact with.

We’ll end up blending both of those techniques into a seamless experience fairly often, and in fact that’s a hallmark of some of the best holographic experiences — they bring something new, but behave in an expected and seemingly natural way.

Always On

For me, seeing holograms where they don’t exist is something I can’t turn off that easily. My mind naturally wants to fill empty space with holograms now. It’s so easy to do and often happens without consciously thinking about it. Occupational hazard I suppose. Perhaps this book should have come with a warning sticker .

Once you start, it’s hard to stop imagining how holograms can impact environments

You’ll find that as you move through life with these thoughts of filling spaces with holographic actors, scenes present themselves to you like freezeframes in a bad 80’s music video. It will be a sudden realization that a room or area has holograms in it already – it’s just that no one can see them except you. Or conversely, you have a nagging feeling that a space is calling out for holograms of some sort. You just can’t quite put your finger on what type yet.

As an example, I walked into a hotel one night and saw this empty lobby. I started thinking to myself in passing how it felt so cold despite being a really nicely designed space for people to use. There was no life in it at all that night.

Such a beautiful space, yet so empty

I was in a hurry to get somewhere at the time, so instead of stopping to figure out exactly what kind of holographic scene I’d love to see happening in there, I just pulled out my phone and took a quick photo. Didn’t think much about it at the time.

Some days later, I looked back at the photo and it came to me. What was missing that night was the sense the hotel was active and alive. People were choosing to hang out in the lobby because it was so cool in there. They wanted to be in there relaxing and enjoying themselves.

Here’s what that new scene looked like to me.

Why can’t this lobby be full of live music and dancing holograms?

Instead of just a gorgeous modern lobby full of empty chairs and well-lit plants, we see a bunch of people in there enjoying some live music courtesy of a holographic DJ and their spirit dancers. There’s even a super cool fire pit for people to virtually warm themselves as they dig the show.

That’s the kind of lobby I’d want to hang out in. You?

Goes to show that even with our new habit of constantly looking for holograms in new spaces, it sometimes takes a bit of time and focused thought to create those truly memorable experiences that best fit a space.

The key to finding new areas to explore is keeping your own personal holographic generator on at all times. The more you try these mindshifting techniques , the more you discover.

Realistic or Futuristic

It’s important to note as we talk about filling spaces with holograms, that by its nature envisioning does not have to be completely realistic. It doesn’t even have to adhere to the current capabilities of the platforms or tools that currently exist. Envisioning is generally “of the future” and as such can feel more inspirational than realistic.

For example, in my HoloScenes series there’s an underlying premise that anyone can see the holograms in open spaces because they have been publicly shared and the technology used to see them is prevalent and frequently used. None of that is true today, but that’s not the point. It illustrates a possible future we can work toward. We project that someday it will be true, or at least we want it to be, so that’s enough to base our work on.

Fanciful or futuristic explorations are the hallmark of envisioning. We let our thoughts go where they want to, without constraint, to see where they lead us. This path is expected and encouraged.

Conversely, envisioning can be used to show your ideas quite realistically, remaining true to expected behavior, existing capabilities, and social norms. This type of design is done to help people visualize something that has yet to be built. It’s meant as a blueprint of sorts rather than a directional suggestion. The real difference between this type of envisioning and a more fanciful treatment of the subject matter is that people can recognize the realistic nature of it immediately.

Combining both realistic and futuristic aspects of ideas is my favorite way to work in this medium, as you’ll see throughout my examples. You can combine established practices and capabilities with hopeful improvements to take your audience where you need the story to go — whether to push on the technology aspects of the project and platform, or to set new ideas forth for interaction and participation possibilities.

Envisioning is what you need it to be, realistic or futuristic. Both get us to the places we need to be in order to share and discuss ideas with other people.

Capturing Thoughts

In the case of being more realistic with your explorations, you don’t need to perfectly visualize and exhaustively define things upfront in holographic to successfully communicate the concepts — just the opposite in fact. Since speed is the key to moving your idea forward, doing a hand drawn sketch or crafting a narrative about the feel of the experience you’re looking for is a great way to start the envisioning process.

You’ll have many opportunities to refine and fill out the details of initial explorations, so don’t slow down in when you need to capture that brilliant thought about where things need to go.

Conversely, if you have the skills to jump in and capture your thoughts in code, 3D models, or high fidelity mockups go for it! That runs counter to traditional design methodologies of staying low fidelity at first, but there’s nothing traditional about holographic computing.

There’s no “right way” to envision your ideas. Just do it fast and keep moving.

Shifting Your Mindset

Shifting your mindset through all of the above methods gets us ready to start actually working on creating tangible artifacts and sketches to share and discuss with other people. The next section goes into the many different ways to get there quickly.