Ripples of Impact

As part of our work with the Human Sciences Studio of Accenture Ireland, we were faced with the challenge of making "the invisible, visible", so as to materialize the HSS’ purpose of identifying all the imperceptible human processes at work in wider scale issues. 

Hence the desire for a data-driven story to bridge between vast data and personal perception and understanding, offering a new perspective on hidden human dynamics. 

This led to our idea of developing an installation that would translate this idea of "large-scale change through the humanistic lens" into a concrete, sensorial experience. This piece was to be shown to potential clients or visitors to the office, as a way to explain the HSS beyond mere words. 

Inspired by kinetic wall installations and the idea of a “moving architecture”, we decided to create a kinetic wall of our own, titled "Ripples of Impact." The wall, installed within the HSS quarters, consists of an elastic fabric responding and warping itself to the movements of eight extruding pins, creating shapes and patterns meant to represent the unseen forces and connections within social systems.

In tandem with building the kinetic wall installation, we designed a corresponding story - a guided journey in which the mechanisms come alive to express the narrative of large-scale change and human impact. 

Visualizing the System and Its Influence

In the installation, every movement and shape represents a different component of the narrative. From a single point of light expanding into layers to represent the different systems we are part of, the visuals then shift into ripples to illustrate the effect of blockers as obstacles to progress, which eventually dissolve into multiple pulsating ripples converging into bright beacons, symbolizing the impact of “coming together” through collective action as a true catalyst for change. 

Beyond the Story

We built the story around collective action as a way to exemplify the narrative potential of our kinetic wall installation. But it’s also a component of a larger narrative which is - how can we inspire people to take action and elicit change within the status quo? 

At the same time, this wider scope of inspiring change takes many shapes and forms, and a crucial aspect of our design was making it adaptable to other stories too: Ultimately, our idea for this installation was to create a tool that the HSS team would then be able to adapt to other narratives. Rather than being built for a unique narrative journey, “Ripples of Change” was constructed with the notion of “modularity” in mind: an ever-changing, versatile, evolving platform through to inspire viewers to take action.