As students began classes in fall 2008, RISD introduced a new communications tool to provide the campus community with a highly visual and spontaneous method of connecting with one another. Seven large-screen digital bulletin boards have been installed at strategic locations on campus to inform the community about events and enable students, faculty and staff to post their own musings, messages, artwork, doodles, poetry, questions and comments.

“As I enter my first year at RISD it is important to make communications more open, which is a key element for any organization to grow and flourish,” notes RISD President John Maeda. “One aspect of this is this digital bulletin board system, developed to offer students, faculty and staff a new means to express themselves and communicate with one another.”

The system was developed through a partnership between RISD’s Interactive Media team in partnership with Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and the New York-based tech design firm Potion, run by former students of Maeda’s from the MIT Media Lab. Fed in part through RISD’s intranet calendar, the digital bulletin boards allow anyone on campus to post anything they would like. Rather than looking like the ubiquitous electronic advertising seen in most airports and subway stations, Potion devised a dynamic, high-energy zooming interface built on Apple’s motion-savvy Quartz Composer. At regular intervals, the community-generated content appears to fall onto the screen in a jumble, rearrange itself, send specific items to the foreground and remain in constant motion until it’s recycled back into the mix of new information at the next periodic update.

As a member of Samsung’s North America advisory board, Maeda has helped the company make a paradigm shift in its approach to consumer electronics and connect with the art world for inspiration in its latest designs. When he asked if Samsung might provide large display screens for RISD’s community communications project, the company donated seven of its newly released 52” Touch of Color™ LCD HDTVs, a $25,000 gift in kind. A gradated blend from red to black, the Samsung HDTV frame was inspired by Murano blown glass.

The large digital screens have been installed at strategic hubs around campus, including The Met refectory, Woods-Gerry Gallery, the lobbies of the Center for Integrative Technologies, the Design Center, 161 South Main, The Roger Mandle Living and Learning Center at 15 Westminster and the new Chace Center.

Throughout the fall, students, faculty and staff are expected to begin experimenting with exactly how they want to use this new tool to communicate with each other. And for Mac-users on campus, the ever-changing content of the new bulletin boards can be downloaded as a screensaver – making for an easily accessible desktop tool as well.