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Eyeo2012 – Jake Barton from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.
The speaker and designer that I chose to write about is Jake Barton. He is the founder of an experience design firm called Local Projects that works with museums, brands, and public spaces. The basis of his work is engaging his audience through emotion and technology with storytelling. His firm is based in New York, NY and he describes himself as a user experience designer. In his talk. Mr, Barton describes the creative process like falling in love– just as messy and scary and exhilarating. His projects are very diverse and range from designing parts of the 9/11 memorial Ground Zero to rendering interactive sculptures in Times Square. My favorite work of his is the Times Square interactive water sculpture. The sculpture displays a giant heart inside of a glass cube of water jets. Beside the sculpture is a podium that says touch me and when a person touches it, the sculpture beats to the person’s heartbeat. If the person holds another’s hand, the sculpture beats faster and so on. The message of the sculpture is about the beauty and importance of human connection– a message that really resonated with me. Mr. Barton connects with his audience through humor and using common emotions to relate to one another.