The ‘Docs on the Spot’ project is a collaboration between several different parties: Institute of Network Cultures, IDFA TV, Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld & Geluid and Virtueel Platform.It started out as an assignment to develop a mobile application to watch specific clips of multiple documentaries on their specific locations. Coming from a background of conceptual Industrial Design and commissioned to prototyping the app within a small window of time, we realized the concept wasn’t quite as clear-cut as once proposed. More complex but interesting and underlying questions emerged:
- How can we enrich the documentary with its actual physical location?
- How can we enrich the physical location with the documentary?
- What role can other existing relevant content play?
With the app as the ultimate answer to an opportunity that was yet to be defined, the question remained if the road towards it needed to be restructured. In order to give a meaningful answer to the underlying questions we broke the whole concept down, and started working bottom up.