How does one brighten the experience for seriously ill children staying in the hospital? One colorful, state-of-the-art answer can be found in the recently installed “Discovery Zone” interactive video wall display.
This past September, the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware unveiled the “Discovery Zone” in a brand-new five-story atrium that was part of a campus-wide $270-million renovation project. It is made up of forty-five NEC X464UN forty-six-inch direct LED-backlight LCD displays set up in five bays of 3×3 grids that are synced together to create a narrative storyline. This 50-foot-wide-by-9-foot-high video wall uses Microsoft Kinect2 gesture technology to allow up to thirty younger patients (and their relatives) to interact at one time with on-screen magical creatures, landscape, flora and fauna, and in the process, escape the harsh realities of their hospital stay.
“The Discovery Zone is a marriage of gesture technology, animation, and creative story-telling—the biggest install of its kind in a hospital,” said Greg Richey, CEO of Kinesis Studio, the company behind this display.
Founded several years ago by interactive artist Scott Snibbe and located in the heart of the technology district in San Francisco (near Twitter headquarters, in fact), Kinesis Studio generates immersive, innovative, gesture-based interactive technology and storytelling experiences on walls, floors, and tables for public spaces such as museums, hospitals, tradeshows, branded environments, etc.
Their experience counted. The employee-owned company had worked on prior interactive display hospital work across the country before responding to and winning the Request for Proposal (RFP) by Nemours. “We provided a very detailed outline of what we could do for them in the RFP process,” says Sherri Nevins, executive producer of Kinesis Studio.
Nemours is an internationally recognized children’s health system, and because of this background, its officials told Kinesis upfront that they wanted this display to always be a changing piece of artwork for the next five years. “Their valid reasoning was when kids come back to the hospital, they’re going to want to see something different every single time,” says Nevins, “so they don’t wear out the excitement of the wall.”
This meant Kinesis had to find ways to “stretch” equipment so that it can run 24/7 for five years, an incredibly difficult proposition. “If one component fails, then the whole thing suffers,” says Nevins. “So we had to develop software and test everything thoroughly. But we nailed it pretty well!”
This resulting interactive experience makes children feel like they can create and nurture something in an environment where they may be facing a lot of fears or even death. Fantasy creatures and blooming plants appear throughout the digital canvas. For example, one interaction allows children to combine and grow “seeds” through a series of programmable weather patterns to create something different each time. “Kids can take a blue seed and a pink seed, put them together, and grow a pink-and-blue plant,” says Nevins. “Then this plant pops out another seed, and they can combine it with a third seed like a green one to create a blue-pink-green plant.”
Here’s how the display works: Each bay of monitors is connected to a computer. A Microsoft Kinect2 camera (the same used in Xbox and Dance-Dance controllers) is installed at the base of the wall and is also connected to the same computer. Then the camera’s infrared sensors track body movements (up to two at a time) and sends it back to the computer, which then reinterprets it as a silhouette and integrates the resulting avatar into the LCD display to interact with the digital landscape.
The NEC X464UN displays have a bezel gap of just 5.7mm. This slim bezel was critical for the experience, as it allowed Kinesis to create a video wall in full screen or as four different sources. With DisplayPort 1.2 multi-streaming, they are capable of delivering ultra-high definition resolutions across the entire canvas of displays.
Because the wall is curved, Kinesis installers had to change up the typical mounting methods on the back of the displays and create custom spaces on the wall for each of those bezels to fit flush together.
Kinesis Studio coded the entire immersive narrative, collaborating with Nemours educators, nurses, doctors, occupational and physical therapists, and a select youth advisory council and incorporating their feedback to create an experience Nevins dubs “creative therapy.”
The intention is to move the needs for repetitive motions in therapy from a cold, static room into a digital landscape where children can actively create something. “If a child needs to raise their arms above their head a lot, they can wave them in the Discovery Zone and create a rainbow on the screens,” says Nevins. “Their whole mind is transported from ‘I’m doing therapy,’ to ‘I’m doing play.’”
One component Nemours officials requested was that this display be touch-free. Not only would this promote durability and hygiene, but it also would open up the number of kids who could access the screen at one time.
Kinesis actually signed the contract to the work on this project back in February 2013, and a year-and-a-half later, they’re finally able to step back and enjoy the results. “We took a lot of time to research everything in production and installation,” says Nevins. “It was imperative that we picked long-lasting, commercial-based equipment and hardware that would last for five years.”
Everything was planned to the tiniest detail with the project coordinator at Nemours. Detailed documents on integration and hardware were drawn up and created, with constant updates and adjustments implemented as it went along.
Working on a project for nearly two years can equate to an eternity when dealing with state-of-the-art technology. The latest-and-greatest always seems to be around the corner. “Our whole plan was nimble enough to accommodate new technology if it came in at the time,” says Nevins. “And it did!
“While we were researching how to create this wall, we started out with one type of monitor, and then mid-design, NEC developed a better one that fit the same spec.”
Meanwhile the industry still hasn’t caught up in terms of cable length when it comes to working with Kinect2 technology. “The Discovery Zone cable runs to a data closet that’s about 200 feet away, which is a long cable run,” says Nevins. “We typically do 50 or 100 feet.
“There’s nothing out in the display industry right now with that kind of cable run at all, so we had to innovate the parts and extenders to make this happen.”
The most amazing accomplishment here might be that Kinesis was not able to do any pre-site surveys of the wall beforehand. You see, this building didn’t even exist at the time! “We worked closely with Nemours, who built the wall based on our specs,” says Nevins. “We had to make sure we could plug these monitors in through the wall and then take care of our power and cabling needs.”
This led to another challenge: When working with Kinect2 software, lighting conditions are critical. Although one can have daylight, direct sun is forbidden.
“We had to really test and imagine what the lighting conditions were going to be based on the drawings and the discussions we had with Nemours,” says Nevins. “When they were building this wall, we knew there was going to be a large bank of windows to the left and to the right. So we had to make sure that no direct sun would be hitting any of the monitors.”
So far, everyone involved—from hospital officials to patients to integrators—are enamored with the interactive experience Nemours and Kinesis Studio collaborated on to create. “We are delighted to be a part of such a worthwhile initiative, especially one that will bring joy to children during their hospital stays,” said Ashley Flaska, vice president of Marketing for NEC Display.
When building something like this, Nevins stresses that tight collaboration with one’s client is key. “We really had to listen to the hospital and build to their needs,” she says.
With the technological capabilities on display here, it wouldn’t be a surprise to find more hospitals installing interactive digital systems such as this one for kids—and adults.
—Jeff Wooten
