When she graduates in May, Christina Brant hopes to use the skills she’s developed as an architecture and human-computer interaction major to design user experiences — physical, digital or both. Her recent first-place finish in the Walt Disney Imagineering “Imaginations” competition could make achieving that goal a whole lot easier.
Started in 1992, Imaginations challenges teams of students from universities across the U.S. to showcase their skills and talents by designing a Disney-related project. This year, the teams were tasked with selecting a large, densely populated urban environment and designing an experience that temporarily or permanently transformed the city for the enjoyment of its residents and visitors.
Brant and teammates John Brieger (senior, computer science), Angeline Chen (junior, communications design) and Matthew Ho (fifth-year senior, architecture) began their project not buy jumping right into the design, but by setting goals that would guide their whole process.
“First, we set the overall goal of creating an experience that someone wouldn’t be able to encounter in their lifetime,” Brant said. The team also focused on the notion of cultural exchange, and looked for a solution that would push its limits. They landed on the concept of antipodes — two locations literally across the world from each other. In this case, Bangkok and Lima, Peru.
Their project, aptly titled “Antipode,” takes the form of a two-week cultural-exchange festival that unfolds simultaneously in each country. The team created a backstory, in which two children long ago stumbled upon magical whispering tress — one each in Bangkok and in Lima. The trees allow the children to talk to each other from opposite ends of the globe, and they grow up sharing their lives. Eventually, though, the trees fill up with memories and stop working.
The Antipode Festival celebrates The Great Stumps — remnants of the magical trees that are converted into stages in each city to host cultural performances, and opening and closing ceremonies. At the closing ceremony, the Great Stump sinks into itself to become a portal between Lima and Bangkok, where guests can communicate with their counterparts from the other side of the world.
The students collaborated to create the backstory and characters for their project, and submitted a presentation to Disney Imagineering in November that contained original images and photomontages of their experience. They were named one of the six finalists in December, and earned an all-expense-paid trip to Walt Disney Imagineering the last week in January to present their work to a panel of Imagineering judges. The teams also went behind the scenes to see what makes Walt Disney Imagineering — and Disneyland — tick.
“We’ve been socializing with Imagineers, learning what they do and seeing projects. It’s been awesome,” Brant said. “It’s been interesting to see the collaborative process and how things work.”
At the end of the week, the CMU team took first place based on criteria Disney Imagineers use to critique their own work: the team’s ability to collaborate across different disciplines and backgrounds; mastery of their individual skills; whether the project provides an engaging guest experience; understanding of the local and tourist market in the chosen location; the ability to tell a compelling and engaging story; and knowledge and passion for the Disney brand and Walt Disney Imagineering. They’re the third consecutive CMU team to finish in the top three, but the first to win it all.
In addition to earning a cash prize, the CMU team members gained practical knowledge of design and multidisciplinary collaboration during their process.
“I learned how to work with people who had different backgrounds and skill sets, and how those can be melded into an overall proposal or product,” Brant said of the experience. “When people have diverse backgrounds and experiences, you have different opinions and ways of viewing things. And I think that really challenges and pushes the project further.”
For Brant and her teammates, that collaborative style could pay off in a big way, as Disney Imagineering uses Imaginations as a platform for scouting the next generation of creative and innovative thinkers for possible internships with the company. And what better way to design experiences — physical, digital or both — than as a Disney Imagineer?