Barcelona-based independent data design studio Domestic Data Streamers used BCN3D Technologies 3D printers to create interactive installations for the Cisco Live 2020 event earlier this year.
Using BCN3D Epsilon, the creative studio was able to design, produce and set up a “recommended wall” installation within 4 weeks to catch up with more than 15,000 visitors at the event in Barcelona in January 2020.
The wall has a clickable screen that allows visitors to interact with it to obtain useful information about Cisco Live. Domestic Data Streamers’ team found that 3D printing is the ideal solution for clickable screens for prototyping and iterative customization.
Pol Trias, Design Director of Domestic Data Streamers, explained: “Without 3D printing, this cannot happen.”
“For such a project, if you want to get high-quality results in a short time and with a limited budget, there is no better option than 3D printing.”
Trias believes that the mission statement of Domestic Data Streamers, established in 2013, is “[creating] a meaningful connection between data and the audience.” The studio combines storytelling with data and art to enable information exchange to “create participatory projects to build communities, educate, communicate and drive change”.
In an office composed of researchers, designers, coders, and strategists, domestic data streaming has established partnerships with more than 130 partners worldwide, including the United Nations and UNICEF, Google, BuzzFeed, and Spotify. The studio has created interactive projects for these customers in more than 17 countries for the audience.
Trias confirmed that to help build its interactive devices, the “Home Data Streaming” seminar “has been using BCN3D printers from the beginning”, “The printers work very well, and we expect a high success rate Support is always fast and helpful. ”
Since most of the company’s unique installations combine architecture, interactive data dashboards, and visual, spatial, product, and sound design, in many cases components must be designed and manufactured as needed. In these cases, home data streaming has used 3D printing in its projects.
In Cisco Live 2020, the task of home data streaming is to create an interactive display of the event schedule; in other words, a clickable screen wall shows the daily agenda. Visitors will click on the scheduled event of interest and then convert the animated image into a QR code, which can then be scanned for more information.
Although pre-existing objects can be used to easily make wall structures, data streamers in the United States find that clickable screens must be customized. “As a clickable button, there are many mechanisms involved,” Trias explained. Because the components require a lot of iterations and the time required to complete the project is very short, the domestic data streaming team turned to its internal BCN3D Epsilon 3D printing system.
Using Epsilon, the design studio was able to produce many prototypes and iterate the design of clickable screens within 4 weeks. Without including internal components, more than 40 main covers were printed with PET-G 3D before being set to Cisco Live 2020. We have been proposing new ideas, and this process is exactly what 3D printing provides us, which can quickly physicalize all the ideas we have every day.