User Scenario

 

            Maggie is a 19-year-old first year material art student at the Ontario Collage of Art and Design. On March 13th she wakes up at 7:00am right before her alarm sounds. "That's unusual" she says to herself, for Maggie is the type of person to continually press snooze and take an extra 20-minute nape before getting up. Not only did she wake up early but also she is completely energized and ready to go for the day. Walking extra slow Maggie looks at the city around her. She realizes she has never had the chance to breath in the beauty before because she usual cuts it close having to get coffee and arriving to class no more than 10 minutes late. But today is different. She can feel it in her skin. She is happy, not rushed, peaceful, and ready for another day.

 

            She reaches class 10 minutes early and discovers she is the first. She waits for 5 minutes before something catches her eye in the hall. There are a lot more students in the school today than usual and she watches several students point to the floor and run down the hall laughing. She steps into the hall to see what the commotion is. On the floor she notices feet marks leading down the hall. She leaves her things in her class and decides to follow the feet markings. It leads her to the auditorium on the bottom floor. As she walks in a new environment overwhelms her. Mist floats on the floor, sounds of birds chirping, and built up in front of her are massive trees much taller than her. "I'm in a rain forest,” she says to herself. She walks in amongst the trees, it is very misty and she can't she to far ahead. She is consumed by curiosity and excitement, what is the point? Is something going to happen? Suddenly she sees vibrant colours race across her path further ahead. 3 minutes later she sees another vibrant figure race across her path. This one she saw better than the first and raced after it. It stopped abruptly behind a tree almost as if it wants to hide or camouflage itself. She followed and stepped around in front of it to get a better look. This creature is wearing bright blues and reds and oranges and has a mask with horns. It's arms are mishap-en and longer than proportion. It looks like a creature that is a combination of Monty python's 'the meaning of life; where oh where has my little fish gone' and the guardian from the film Pan's Labyrinth. After another 3 minutes has passed the creature jumps out of place and runs to another location. Maggie lets out a quick scream, it caught her off guard. The creature acted as if it had heard nothing. Out of the side of Maggie's eye she sees another creature, and another. Not all of them were the same colour or shape, nor were they all running, but instead creeping, ignoring everyone. "This is awesome" Maggie says. "It's like a fairy tale". She walks around watching the magic and feeling the calmness and fun atmosphere. "I love it." On Maggie's way out she watches others make the same funny observations she had. As she leaves the auditorium and steps into the seemingly boring and plain hall she takes a deep breath. Was that her imagination? She had the illusion of leaving this world and entering one of fantasy and magic. A smile and a chuckle lights up her face as she walks back to her class. 

Public Activate

Erica, a 21 years old graphic design student of Ontario College of Art and Design, rushes to school due to the delayed subway in the early morning. Since she has been thinking how embarrassing she will be in class about her late, she starts to have a bad mood.
After she gets off from the train, she started running to school and trys her best to get into class as soon as possible. Unfortunately, by the time she arrives the classroom, she realizes that the class has been canceled as the professor is out of town for the whole week. Thinking back about all the useless rushes for school, she says to herself, "that's it, I have enough for today."
Erica starts to render around in school and try to figure out which friends are free after class to have lunch with her. She goes to the main building, walking up one floor using the stairs by the express elevator.
All in a sudden, she is stunned with what in front of her.
In front of her, there is an exhibition with the topic of Memories in Childhood. With all the excitment brought by the toys and any works of art that relates to her childhood, she is totally awake and starts to think about all the beautiful memories from her childhood.
Listening to the happy background music and exploring within the exhibition and her memories, she gets a really good refreshment from the unlucky morning.
She says to herself gracefully, "what a great start of the afternoon."

Jessica Rogers - Red Carpet, Meet OCAD.

Dee lays asleep in her pitch-dark room, which is completely silent, except for the sound of bubbles coming from a large fish tank from the corner of the room. Out of nowhere, a loud crowd starts to cheer and clap! Completely terrified, Dee falls out of her bed, hitting the floor harder then a bag of bricks. While rubbing her eyes in confusion, and checking her limps to see if they are all still intact, she realizes that the crowd cheering was not for her, but for the Spice Girls. Laughing at herself, she picks herself up off the floor and starts to get ready for a long day at school.

Dee walks to school (Ontario College of Art and Design), with a smile on her face, despite having to trek through loads of ugly brown slush, and knee-high deep snow piles. Her smile doesn't disappear anytime soon, as she approaches her local Second Cup where she gets her usual drink - a delicious Green Tea Latte made with Soymilk!

About 7 minutes later, still sipping on her favourite drink, Dee reaches OCAD. Even though she has Spice Girls blaring from her Ipod directly into her ear, she can still hear chanting from the Auditorium in the main building of OCAD. She is instantly reminded of her morning incident of falling off her bed due to a crowd cheering, so she lets out a loud chuckle, while spitting out her drink - which then turned into a giant snort, how utterly embarrassing (and slightly charming)! Curious as a cat, she walks towards the noise to check it out. She is hoping that all the cheering is over homemade muffins, or cookies, with lots of chocolate milk!

Pushing open the doors at a snail's pace, she sees crazy neon lights and what looks like a crowd of people laughing, dancing, and talking with each other. As she gradually approaches, she notices that there is an area off to the side where people are taking photos of each other. There seems to be a big box filled with accessories and unique clothing pieces. Walking even closer, she almost fainted. THERE ARE MOVIE STARS EVERYWHERE! She realizes that all the OCAD students are just hanging out and taking with all the celebrities, and then taking portraits with them to document this crazy day in the auditorium! In the back corner she sees Johnny Depp. Wiping the drool off her face, she runs towards him screaming, "JOHNNY... JOHNNY! IT'S ME DEE, YOUR FUTURE WIFE! I KNEW THIS DAY WOULD COME SOONER THEN LATER!"

To clarify: Some of the students from our class would be dressed up as famous celebrities. These celebrities would interact with the other OCAD students, putting on a fake persona of whom they are emulating. There are photo booth areas where the students can go take photos with their favourite celebrities, documenting this important moment in their life! There would be fun music in the background, so people can dance around and just enjoy themselves, making the interaction and environment more pleasant and welcoming.

Activate!!! XX: TWISTER

Wednesday was Derek’s most stressful day. He had ‘Objects and Environments’ from 8:30 to 11:30 in the morning and then, since he was in Industrial Design, ‘Draw like Leonardo’ from 12:00 to 3:00. Derek usually used his half hour between classes to quickly put finishing touches on his drawings for drawing class, but this weekend he had gotten all of his work done and that left him with thirty minutes of socializing time!
Derek Kim, who’s parents immigrated from North Korea in 1985, was quite a social butterfly and couldn’t go anywhere without every other person stopping him to say hi; he loved this.
At 11:34, Derek walked into OCAD foyer of the main building and was unpleasantly surprised to find it almost devoid of people. He resolved to go see who was in the first year wood studio –
“Hey Derek!” It was Danni, and Environmental Design student, whom Derek had ‘Form and Structure’ with during first semester, he also had a huge crush on her.
“Hi Danni, what’s up? Seems like I don’t see you as much, now that we don’t have any classes together.”
“Oh I know! And I’ve been so busy this semester with essays and stuff. But hey, did you see what’s going on in the Auditorium? It looks so fun! I was just waiting for someone else that I knew to show up, I didn’t want to go in alone.” said Danni with a look that meant she wanted him to go with her.
Derek took the hint, “The Auditorium? I don’t know, let’s go find out.”
As the pair approached the doors to room 190, noise could be heard from within.
Danni pulled the Auditorium doors open and just then a loud, deep voice could be heard saying, “Left hand, Yellow!” followed by a short sequence of high-energy techno music.
“Right foot, Red!”
In the Auditorium, Derek and Danni found a giant game of Twister, being played by over 30 people by the looks of it. The projection screen, which was usually a place for students to stare during lectures, showed an animation of a Twister spinner, spinning just as the real thing would if it had been flicked. The spinning was accompanied by more high-energy music until it stopped and a deep voice from the speakers said “Left foot, Green!” and the crowd of tangled students shifted on the patchwork of Twister mats connected on the floor.
“Come on,” said Danni to Derek, “let’s play!”
Derek didn’t have to be asked twice.

Sarah Rafter User Scenario - Take 2.

Michael Drummond, a 21 year old illustration student at the Ontario College of Art and Design, is leaving one of his early morning classes bleary eyed and exhausted. Shouts are echoing throughout the main hall, where he has stopped at the coffee shop to up his caffein intake in hopes of staying awake for his next class. Coffee in hand and some time to kill he decides to check out the commotion going on in the auditorium. 

He walks through the doors, and makes his way to the edge of the second floor seats to get a clear view. Below his is what looks like a low budget art students game show gone mad. A giant canvas hangs from the ceiling of the auditorium, and there are three contestants standing behind podium on either side. There are also two people directly in front of the canvas standing behind what appears to be water guns on poles. Intrigued, he decides to make his way down to the main floor to get closer to the action.

As he walks out of the staircase and makes his way closer to the front of the auditorium, he notices he is now walking on a giant plastic sheet. Drawing from past experiences, he knows that plastic coverings are an indication of a huge mess soon to come. The noise of it beneath his feet alone gets him even more excited. He looks up form the plastic just in time to see what appears to be the game show 'host' handing two pieces of paper to the gunmen. The host gives the word and the two gunmen begin frantically unravelling their pieces of paper and quickly begin shooting the canvas. Only, to Michael's surprise, steady streams of colored paint shoot out onto the canvas. The gunmen began making strange unrecognisable patterns. After a few moments the crowd begins shouting again, screaming out random objects and animals. Michael assumes they are guessing what the gunmen are drawing. The contestants listen to the crowd in silence, until one of the girls on the left hand team rings the bell on top of her podium. Everyone stops shouting and turns their attention to her. She makes her guess, and the host deems it correct. Their team jumps and shouts in glorious victory. The team to the right stepped down from the podium and began walking to join the crowd, which now michael realizes is a line.  Michael quickly rushes into line ahead of the losing team, and counts out his position. He will be in the next round. Overwhelming excitement coarses through him, while he join the crowd in calling out guesses of what objects could be hidden within the hideous linework the gunmen are making. A bell rings out, and everyone goes silent. The girl on the left-hand team calls out her guess, and is deemed victorious again by the judge.

The losers stepped down and michael quickly took a place behind the podium, along with the two people ahead of him. The host walks over to the two new gunmen and hands them their papers. On the given signal, they frantically open their papers and hasitly begin shooting. Michael looks from the screaming audience, to the canvas, and back to the audience. He hears the word 'bird' shouted from somewhere within the audience, and a jolt of nervous excitement springs his hand forward towards his bell. However, just as he was about to reach it, the ring of another bell was heard from the other team. The girl quickly calls out her guess, and is deemed correct by the host. Michael laughs in anger, steps down from the podium, and makes his way to the auditorium door. As he is walking to his next class, which he is now late for, he hopes the game will still be there upon his return. Still out of breath from excitement, he wants nothing more than to show that girl who's who.   

Sarah Rafter User Scenario

Oliver Swainson: Save the world...maybe.

Jeremy Hewson, a 16 year old male, was visiting Toronto with his family. Still in high school, he was visiting Toronto to see his older brother and get a taste of college life. He loved action and adventure movies, especially spy films. James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Solid Snake were his heroes and he followed their fictional adventures with relish. He frequently fantasized about being a lone agent or spy and sneaking into enemy headquarters to capture vital information or save the world from evil.

During his visit to Toronto his parents took him to OCAD to see his older brother, George. When he walked into the building he could hear a loud klaxon periodically going off in the main hall, intrigued, he asked his parents if he could go take a look while they went off to find George. He followed the sound of the alarms and saw an OCAD student walking out of the auditorium door looking quite proud of some accomplishment. He opened the door the student exited to take a closer look. Inside, he found that the auditorium was dark with only a single spotlight providing illumination. It was shining down on a short, black, rectangular, pedestal in the center of the floor that had a large LCD screen with a timer on it and a big red button. A couple feet in from the door there was a large yellow and black striped line on the floor separating the section of floor where he was standing at the entrance and the rest of the room including the pedestal.

Curious to get a closer look at the pedestal, Jeremy stepped forward and crossed the yellow and black caution line. Immediately a hidden speaker goes "bwoeep! bwoeep!" and the whole room is doused in red light. Another light flicks on and the whole floor appears to be gridded off into 4 by 4 foot square tiles by lines of light. The LCD screen shows 5:00:00 and starts counting down five minutes. A small red LCD on the pedestal starts steadily flashing. Jeremy immediately regrets his decision to walk forward but before getting upset a feeling of excitement comes over him. "The pedestal seems dangerous but I think that button has something to do with stopping it!" he thinks to himself. He steps forward into the next square and the counter continues to count down, and then the next one. When his foot passes into this one however, warning lights start flashing and the speaker starts going "BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEE~" the alarm stops as soon as Jeremy retracts his foot. He tries going to the square to his left. This time the alarm doesn't go off.

Square by square, Jeremy gradually makes his way around the alarm rigged invisible maze, slowly working his way closer to the pedestal. He can see his time is running out and the alarms that go off when he hits a bad square are starting to sound more frantic. With only seconds to spare on the LCD screen, Jeremy finally reaches the center square containing the pedestal and hits the big red button. The counter immediately stops, a celebration jingle plays, and the lights revert to normal. As Jeremy walks out of the room he feels a profound sense of accomplishment and relief. He may never know if the pedestal was actually dangerous or not but he still felt like he saved the world that day. What he didn't see was the trap resetting as he walked out the door of the room, waiting for it's next "agent"...