Snapshots of the Universe

Client: Stephen Hawking and Penguin Random House

Project: Snapshots of the Universe is a companion app for the Stephen Hawking’s books, A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell. The goal of the project was to distill the complex content of the books into simple engaging experiments that explain the principles that control our universe. Concepts such as gravity, acceleration, relativity of motion, and “warped” space had to be presented in a way accessible to both kids and grown-ups.

Role: Visual design, illustration, UX design.

Below is an example of how an experiment was fleshed out. I chose the Earth to Mars experiment to illustrate the process.

1. Initial storyboard of the Earth to Mars experiment. It introduces the two known ways to go from Earth to Mars and also contains some initial thoughts on enhancing the play aspect of the experiment.

2. Second version of the storyboard. It fleshes out the onboarding and the ‘free play’ parts of the experiment and includes directives for the user. There is also exploration of different feedback scenarios.