Mind Final Outline

MIND: RE-REVISED




OVERVIEW: An intuitive, and fluid experience revealing the brain’s evolution under each major presented through animation referencing MRI imagery and Rorschach ink-blot tests.

VISUAL STYLE:

• Influenced directly from the Rorschach ink-blot tests and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of brains
• Primary visual experience would one of an abstracted evolution.
• Frames of animation would be composited of actual blots of ink + paint (tactile feeling)
• Smooth transitions between each of the frames to give the effect of bleeding ink.
• Blots would loosely resemble actual brain matter
• The UI would not include any buttons or text windows until something was revealed, so the experience would be entirely interference-free and exploratory.

DEVELOPMENT TECHNIQUE:

• With After Effects we should be able to achieve a fluid paint-like motion with simple compositing combined with stop-motion animation.
• (If there is a desire for a 3-Dimensional element to to the entire interface, we could allow the entire animation moving through the scans to be places on a flat plane in a rotatable camera-controlled environment, and as the user scrolled through the animation the plane could move backward and forward in space as though it were moving through an actual brain.)

AUDIO:

• Simple atmospheric loops at the beginning of each scan.
• As you progressed through the scan it would start building other elements in such as a beat, more pronounced melody, etc. without ever getting too intrusive to the experience.
• Ideally each new sound added would be a loop, so it could be played simultaneously as the other audio is triggered.

INTERACTION WITH USER:

• The user would be presented with a blank page, and slowly different symbols in the form of Rorschach blots would bleed onto the page in an arrangement resembling a menu.

• Each blot would be representative of one of the majors, with a small text indication of each.
• Each icon would be animated to slowly bleed and move.
• Upon selecting one of the majors, the screen would fade to blank and the user would be presented with the first frame of an ink-blot loosely resembling a slice of a brain in an MRI scan.

• Upon dragging their finger across the screen, the animation would scroll forward, and the animation would change and evolve, as if progressing through a scan.

• It would slowly transform from black and white to include more color, and at each stop along the way would resemble a different color/image/reveal pattern relative to the major.
• Each stop could also reveal text that would provide information about how specifically each major changes your thought and ideation processes.
• Smooth and tactile feel, it would be possible to scroll through the entire animation fluidly back and forth with no interruption.

LINKING FUNCTIONALITY:

• On the splash page of the app, the brain could be represented with a looping animation of ink blots referencing an MRI scan.
• As for how it would transition to the mind app itself, there would be a fade to a white page, and the menu objects would bleed in (like ink), revealing page texture to create the feeling that it was a tactile piece of paper.

INSPIRATIONAL VIDEOS:
3Dimensional Brain-scan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gmJYugUJU8&feature=related

Rorschach ink-blot tests:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEVyywYpzhw

fMRI image:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0F14fY6P7A&feat

Apps of Interest

Scouring the app store for (mostly) free apps that served to both immediately attract me and at the same time be deep enough to hold my interes proved to be incredibly difficult. I asked my brother in law who is currently in med school for recommendations on good interactive medical apps, and while I'm sure they were, none of them were sold for under $14.00. So I set out on my own search for relatively inexpensive medical apps, and I came across the 3D Brain App by Cold Spring Harbor. It wasn't particularly extraordionary in it's execution, but it has most of what I would want in a mostly interactive and informative app about the brain. It covers the 29 main structures of the brain, and also provides you with a rotatable diagram, informing you of its location and relevance to the systems in the brain. The information provided about each system is really where most of its depth lies though. It provides information about overall functions of the system, case studies about the system, associated functions, cognitive disorders, and much more for each individual system. It's biggest weakness, however, is honestly it's presentation. Everything is fairly easy to find, however nothing really stands out. Also, the "3D" model of the brain is only a faux model; it can only rotate on its x and y axis, and zooming in reveals it is only a prerecorded animation. I think its depth of content and fairly easy to understand interface are its strengths though, and I think the Ringling app could benefit from that.

 The second app is a lot simpler in purpose and idea. LED Studio HD is a very basic frame by frame animation program using the concept of LED dots more or less as pixels. It also was free, and has a surprising amount of depth and Intuitiveness for a free app. It has onion skinning, different playback speeds, copy and paste functionality, and the gesture sensitivity is excellent. It's incredibly entertaining due to its immediate pick up and play functionality, and it definitely held my interest for quite a while. While the basic concept is a little too simple for what we're tryin to do, I believe it's ease of use and easy to understand interface are definitely to be considered.

The final app I examined is called Pixelwave. This app caught my eye due to its incredibly pleasing visual interface. In its purest for, it is simply a waveform editor, similar to an oscilloscope. It's interface it almost invisible, though its very easy to figure out. If you drag your figure horizontally across the top half of the screen, you can draw the waveform you're hearing, and berating your finger vertically will change the level and frequency I FTP waveform. The app was 0.99, but upon reading the positive reviews I felt confident enoug to try it out. It was definitely worth the purchase, as it also has deeper editing functions such as MIDI controls, octaves, echo, and recording. It's biggest strength however is its sheen of presentation. The pixels fade off from every object and create a beautifully simple interface for a fairly complicated subject. That I thi is something to take into consideration for the Rngling app.