Chicago Training Center Kiosk

The Power of Solar is an educational kiosk built by M1 Interactive for ComEd’s instructional facilities. The application is targeted towards school children on field trips to teach them about solar energy.

The kiosk was initially created for ComEd’s Chicago Training Center (CTC) in their Smart Energy Hub exhibit space alongside other M1 installations. It was then adapted for Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium and ComEd’s Rockford Training Center (RTC). The educational content was retooled for distribution on ComEd’s online platform to increase accessibility during COVID-19 (shown below).

The CTC kiosk is double-sided; each side has two monitors mounted above a sliding touchscreen on a curved rail. One side displays the story for Community Solar, and the other side displays Private Solar. Both stories have tracks for Grades K-3 and Grades 4+. Tracks are animated videos separated by interactive activities. While the dual monitors play the educational videos, the touchscreen displays time-synchronized captions of the narration. A hologram is mounted above the kiosk and shows an animated video of energy from the sun reaching solar panels on the Earth. The application is driven by the movement of the tablet on the rail and its position relative to the monitors. The user has to move the tablet to the left, center, or right in order to resume the video after the first, second, and third activity, respectfully.

The Shedd installation required significant rework of the original CTC project. I had to adapt the illustrations and animations from three screens to a single touchscreen. The Shedd kiosk only displays the Private Solar story but maintains the activities in between story segments. The Community Solar story was later adapted for online distribution alongside the Private Solar story; this online-only version did not include the touchscreen activities.

I owned creative direction over the entire project after just three months at M1 Interactive. I built this project using Unity. I wrote the software for app flow, gameplay, and sprite animations. All 2-D illustrations and UI assets were created by me with Adobe Illustrator. I took an established concept and created new designs based on the approved art style. I created storyboards and the entire visual flow of the app. I designed and directed the animations, and I also integrated the voice-over audio files. I updated the software and art for subsequent installations based on their new hardware requirements.

Chicago Training Center Kiosk