Sounds Of New York City

SONYC

Overview

SONYC is originally a research project at New York University that is dedicated to studying the intricate soundscape of New York City. In collaboration with the research group, my team and I worked diligently to develop an innovative exhibition experience concept. This concept aims to provide a platform for showcasing their profound research findings while enabling viewers to gain deeper insights and engage with the data in a meaningful way.
*View SONYC’s website

“Taking aim at New Yorkers’ biggest civic complaint – noise – a team of scientists from NYU, working with collaborators at Ohio State University, have launched a first-of-its-kind comprehensive research initiative to understand and address noise pollution in New York and beyond.”

-SONYC

  • As a UI /UX designer that create the user flows for the exhibition.

  • Created the motion piece for projection experience.

  • Led the team as a project manager to move project forward.

My role:

Red Dot Design Award
- 2023 Brands and Communication Design (Student)

Recognition:

Problems & solutions:

The original idea of the projection map was that users will receive headphones and can listen to the noise and sound while standing on the map. However, technically it is hard to locate different users at the same time and sending the right sound to a specific user.

Problem 1:

We did research and found the Audio Spotlight system that can send sound light s spotlight to a small area and only the user within that area can hear the sound.

Solution 1:

During the projection map experience, we had only one projector but we found out that if we put the projector straight on top of the ceiling, users on the map still creates shadows that will block the projection and affect the experience.

Problem 2:

We learned how to use Isadora for projection mapping and we can project same map at the same time and lined them up to avoid shadows.

Solution 2:

The first draft of the exhibition was designed in one single hall. After first round of user testing, we got feedback such as not experiencing enough of “noise and sound”.

Problem 3:

We thought about how to let users experience the most out of the experience. The rethink about the whole purpose of the research is the “sound of NYC”, so we separated the exhibition hall into two parts so that when users travel from first hall to the second one, the recorder will continuing record the experience and that will affect the final artwork at the end of the exhibition.

Solution 3:

SONYC’s researchers

Originally, the idea for the exhibition was to be contained within a single exhibition hall. However, upon conducting user surveys and in-depth research, we decided to divide the exhibition into two parts. This was done to highlight the concept of "New York City's noise" and give visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in the sounds of NYC. As visitors transition from the first exhibition hall to the second, a ticket recorder captures the ambient sounds of the surroundings, ensuring a more complete and authentic experience for all attendees.

We created a Washington Square Park map animation to be projected on the floor. When user step on the map, which has floor sensors beneath it, the floor sensors will trigger the Audio Spotlight system above the map. The speaker will play out different time and area’s noise of Washington sq. park.
We used two projectors and Isadora projection mapping software to project the map to avoid shadows created by the users.

Interactive Projection Mapping

AR experience -
We created the AR experience located at the second exhibition hall. We 3D printed some buildings around Washington sq. for users to scam and experience the AR work with sounds.

Sound test App -
We designed an app mockup for a sound test game. Users will hear different types of sounds and try to guess and compete the result with SONYC’s machine learning result.