1981 : Booz-Allen Hamilton

Cutting Edge Market Study

Booz Allen Hamilton

In late 1981 leading market research firm Booz-Allen Hamilton decided to test the waters for consumer acceptance of interactive electronic services. But who knew what that meant?

I provided interface and interaction design for the Booz-Allen & Hamilton Market Research Team in this highly secret groundbreaking market research study of the potential for online interactive services to the home.

A Visionary Model

Anticipating the coming electronic revolution, we modeled a full range of integrated consumer services:

E-Mail

Shopping

Investment Portfolio Management

Home Finances

Jobline

Home Security

Home Energy Audit

Education

Also

• News Retrieval
• Interactive Gaming
• Banking

This was actually cutting edge stuff – in 1981

Prototyping Interactivity

We proto-typed a potential future integrated dynamic electronic consumer service by bringing together video, computer graphic images on one of those new-fangled videodisks, and a touch-sensitive screen – all delivered through a personal computer.

We were able to emulate dynamically integrated services.

For example:  A consumer purchase in the “Shopping” section would be reflected by an account debit in the “Banking” section and also in “Home Finances“.

All the software – for graphics generation, database management, site navigation and applications subroutines – were developed by the team.  It was rudimentary  … but it worked

Implementation Pioneer

As the graphics expert and interactivity guy:

• I designed individual pages for this project
• Mapped the navigational structure within the site
• Provided videodisc integration. We overlaid high-resolution graphics on the integrated videodisc images (not shown here) for various applications, like Home Shopping.
• The graphics themselves were based on simple character-based images and were built with rudimentary homebrew code.
• I developed character-based graphics sets for all of the pages “by hand”.

In spite of numerous obstacles and substantial ignorance, we still managed to capture an early vision of what was to become The Web.

Deliverables, Tasks, Techniques

• Wireframes
• DemoSite
• Styleguide
• It was an eclectic hodgepodge of technology: Apple computer (pre-Mac), Texas Instruments graphics card, touch-sensitive screen display, IBM/MCA videodisc player as presentation platform

This was a real “chewing gum & rubber bands” exercise. No one had ever pulled together anything like this – or even asked “the Big Questions” about customer acceptance and adoption of interactive new media technology.

Truly cutting edge.

“I want to thank you for the very professional and creative job you did for Booz-Allen in database design and computer graphics screen creation for the Home Information Systems simulator. Your expertise in graphics and interactive video contributed significantly to the overall quality of the system. In addition, your dedication to getting the job done, including your suggestions on improving our software tools, were greatly appreciated. I thoroughly enjoyed working with you and hope to have the opportunity to do so again.”

George P. Lilly, BOOZ-ALLEN & HAMILTON, Inc.

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Visionary Model site

 

 

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