Initial Design

The structural design was effectively handled by Nick, Caitlin and Alan. Some of their structural design goals were:

    • Build a frame to house the video booth.
    • Separate the frame into a main seating area and a small space to house the computer and an emergency keyboard and mouse. Make the 'computer room' easily accessible for on-the-spot maintenance.
    • On one side of the booth is a seat, built-in to the frame.
    • On the other side is a wall supporting a touch-screen display and camera.
    • Install a microphone above the seat for simultaneous audio recording.
    • Make the booth easy to move. In fact, make it easy to disassemble and reassemble.
    • Make the seat close to the touch screen, but far enough to give a sufficient field of view to the camera.

Some additional goals were:

    • It should not generate an uncomfortable amount of heat.
    • Make it bright enough to light the subject without creating too much heat. Scatter the light to keep it out of the visitor's eyes.
    • Make the audio loud enough without disturbing people outside the booth.
    • Video storage and playback should not in any way interfere with a smooth experience while recording a confession.
    • The booth had to work even when it was disconnected from the network. Minimize the delay between reconnecting the booth to the network and making fresh videos available.
    • Neither the booth, nor the visitors, should catch fire.

We planned to build the booth frame from plywood and the exterior walls and roof from plastic. As an example of size, this was our shopping list for plastic sheeting:

    • Five 2.5'x6' (The front, other front, back, and the two sides that hold the computer)
    • Three 1.5'x6' (the rest of the sides)
    • Two 1.5'x2.5' (the tops of the parts not holding the computer)
    • One 2.5'x2.5' (the top of the part with the computer)

We kept a notebook of design ideas and sketches, some of which you can see on the right. If you want to decipher some of Alan's shorthand:

    • A superscript underlined n is short for 'ion', so something like 'nation' would be natn. Similarly, a superscript underlined g is short for 'ing'. If these come after a T, it might look like it's underlined twice, but that's just the crosspiece of the T.
    • A dot is "of", so "two of these" would be "two . these"
    • An arrow pointing down to the left is any conjugation of to be: is, am, are, were, was, will be, etc.

The Cult of Tom Video Confessional Booth Experience

From a process perspective, a visitor (a.k.a confessor) enters the booth and sits. The software recognizes that someone is there and plays its introductory video. The booth presents the confessor with a short introductory video, and then the confessor speaks his or her peace. After some short period of time, the video is made available for everyone on the corporate Intranet.

Experientally, it was clear what The Cult of Tom Video Confessional Booth was going to be: a shrine to Tom. The exterior should showcase Tom, the video introduction would be performed by Tom, and at the conclusion of each confession, Tom would make an additional assessment such as "I'm very proud of you," or "I think I'm going to have to talk with Human Resources" and had to be roughly as accurate as a Magic 8-Ball.

I had my own requirement: to put a button in the booth labeled "Who Da Man?" Any time the confessor pressed it, the loud happy voice of Tom would shout "YOU da man!!" -- an ultimate affirmation. You could hear it whenever you wanted.

This may seem silly but it was important to me. If I'm going to put in some unknown amount of time, I was going to get my 'Who Da Man?' button. I can't tell you how many times I had to yell "YOU da man!" to my teammates to sell them on this idea.