Stadium Control Center

While working at New Space I designed this touch-based control room solution for the monitoring, scheduling and control of Vancouver's largest stadium, BC Place. I was responsible for the end-to-end design process: from project definition with engineering peers and client stakeholders, to prototyping, to visual design, to final interface implementation in a proprietary front end development application from Crestron.

The stadium features a retractable roof which is vulnerable to wind and rainfall during the slow transition between open and closed states. Facility operations staff must make the determination about whether to alter the roof's settings hours in advance, based on incoming weather. This made the weather monitoring interface of the control room critical.

Presets emerged early as a key requirement, enabling operators to easily flip hundreds of mechanical devices (eg: lights, audio systems, signage, etc) between standard configurations.

Life safety issues were a critical design consideration. The stadium contains components that weigh many tons and can be moved between multiple configurations. The roof being the most obvious example, but the massive display suspended above center-field being another. When staff need to modify the screen (to make repairs, for example) it must be lowered via lifts to the field below. This creates obvious life safety risks. The system needed to therefore incorporate safeties against foot guns, including but not limited to confirmation dialogues, countdowns, opportunities to cancel operations, and visual aids.

While the original project charter called only for design and implementation of the software component, we made the case during development for a more holistic approach, taking into consideration the ergonomics and equipment in the space itself, the better to facilitate the worker's tasks. I gathered requirements from stakeholders and proposed various solutions, communicating concepts with the aid of renderings created in Cinema4D.

Josh Carpenter

Hello! I'm a Staff UX Designer for Google Maps, based in Vancouver, Canada. Previously I led design teams at Google and Mozilla working to bring virtual and augmented reality to the open web. Since 2019 I've been traveling and working on a series of personal projects, including an Electron-based Markdown editor and a deep dive into climate change.

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