Capturing user imagination at Cannes Lions by making data beautiful

Data partners with Getty Images

Verve utilises meta search to track the use of imagery and the media that images become associated with and used alongside – providing data that helps businesses get the most from moments of connection. Partnering with Getty Images, the world’s largest image library, unlocked a significant resource that allowed a conceptual framework around the power and creativity of data in capturing and understanding human-first moments – The Art of Data. 

This concept derives from the joining of creative and tech, an essential element of the Wonderful design process where creativity requires technical processes to have a purpose, and tech requires creativity to communicate with audiences and provide a true experience, designed to create awareness within creative industries for how data can elevate media campaigns.  

By demonstrating the Art of Data at Cannes Lions, an international festival of creativity that draws key industry figures, the ability for the concept to cut through the noise and create something attention-grabbing was essential – delivering unique moments based on snapshots of feeling and intuition, and demonstrating an engaging interaction that results in real data.

An app that creates art (without AI)

To embody the Art of Data concept, Wonderful designed and built an app that would allow users to create unique works of art based on momentary snapshots of emotion and their connection to specific visual imagery supplied by Getty Images, whilst providing Verve with clear lines of data and the ability to demonstrate that importance of data to media businesses. 

By answering a series of questions based on emotional reactions to specific images, users would create an art piece that reflected that singular moment and their unique series of answers. The questions did not have a fundamentally right or wrong response, allowing users to answer with genuine emotion rather than what they might be expected to choose.

Creating engagement at the world’s biggest creative festival

To ensure that the Art of Data app would allow users to immediately engage with the concept, a UX-led approach to development was utilised by Wonderful – directly focusing on usability and accessibility to maximise engagement and create moments of wonder.

At the most simple, this meant that the app was available across all devices and platforms, whilst at its most complex able to generate real-time, responsive 3d artworks that would be unique to each user. Each picture response had a different weighted effect on the final artwork, meaning that user choices across the interactive process had a meaningful effect on the outcome.

Artworks were also displayed on large screens across the Cannes Lions event, making cross-platform display essential. To ensure that the data element of the concept would also be met, a robust capture element was implemented that also linked users back into galleries and other areas of the app ecosystem – increasing engagement without relying on repetition that would quickly reduce any emotional links within the process.

Creating value beyond the app

As a proof of concept, the Art of Data app successfully combined information gathering with emotive, creative artwork that had a relevance beyond the app environment. Artwork created by users was used as in-the-room graphics, and artwork could be kept and shared with others, improving engagement after initial use and providing further opportunities for data gathering.