Explorers of the Galaxy

Loss of physical structure, remote cognitive drift

Innovation Day (i-Day) is structured around Design Thinking and traditionally unfolds in physical space. Walls covered in post-its, visible iteration, facilitation cues, and shared energy ground abstract thinking in something tangible.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic eliminated the physical structure that sustained the event.

The remote edition could not rely on proximity or physical artefacts to stabilize abstraction. What had previously been sustained by space now depended entirely on interface.

When physical structure disappears, cognitive drift accelerates. Sustaining focus became the system’s responsibility.

Two event days. Multiple teams. Extended sessions. Remote fatigue.

The platform had to preserve orientation, maintain momentum, and make progression perceptible — without the ambient reinforcement of a shared room.

Abstract workflow, no spatial grounding

Design Thinking is inherently abstract. In physical workshops, abstraction is stabilized by movement and collective visibility. Online, it fragments into tabs and detached documents.

The question was architectural:
How do you convert an intangible workflow into a system that feels navigable, progressive, and structured?

The narrative universe had already been partially defined. Core game concepts existed. Development constraints were real, and the timeline was limited to three months.

Architecture had to absorb complexity and produce coherence.

Mission logic structuring progression

The sci-fi universe was not treated as decoration. It became the organizing logic of the experience.

Each Design Thinking phase translated into a mission. Progression became spatial rather than linear. Advancement was revealed through unlocked nodes, activated paths, and visible structural transformation.

The platform operated through three persistent anchors:
Start — global orientation via the Navigation Chart.
‍Your Ship — identity and system state.
‍Missions — execution and progression.

Progress was expressed through structural change. The narrative justified movement. The architecture regulated it.

Explicit states enabling progression

The system separated progression states from interaction feedback. Locked, Unlocked, and Completed controlled access across the journey, making advancement explicit rather than implicit.

Feedback operated at two levels. Individual tasks produced immediate outcomes — Access Granted or Mission Failed — with retry and contextual hints preventing dead ends. At mission level, completion triggered a larger consequence: a Stargem fragment, followed by the coordinates required to unlock the next destination.

‍Because red functioned as an activation accent across the system, validation and error were not encoded chromatically. Task-level outcomes relied on check and X iconography within consistent overlays, while mission-level feedback shifted to narrative imagery: failure was represented through a fractured astronaut visor, and successful completion through the awarded Stargem.

‍Each layer answered a different question: Can I access this? Did my action work? Have we completed the mission? What happens next?

Immersion guided by structural clarity

Reducing noise to preserve coherence

Mechanics validating understanding

External feedback informing refinement

Performance at scale

The platform supported 130+ participants across two event days, maintaining visible progression throughout a fully remote experience.

Originally developed for the Barcelona i-Day, the system attracted interest from other European institutions and was subsequently selected for use across 14 i-Days in 9 countries.

The Universitat de Barcelona team Parolu secured the Silver Prize at the European final. While the platform was only one of several contributing factors, it successfully supported a team progressing from the local event to European-level competition.

‍Architecture does not win awards. It enables performance.

External coverage — University of Barcelona ↗ · EIT Health ↗

Clarity under abstraction

This project clarified a structural principle:
‍When abstraction increases, architecture must compensate.

Early interface exploration moved too quickly into visual definition. Layout, hierarchy, interaction and visual language were being resolved simultaneously, making structural changes increasingly expensive as the interface evolved.

What worked:
→ Layered progression logic
→ Persistent state visibility
→ Controlled narrative immersion
→ Simplification through removal

What evolved in my practice:
Since then, I use low-fidelity wireframes to validate interface architecture before moving into visual production. Keeping early screens deliberately simple makes hierarchy and interaction easier to challenge, rearrange and discard before visual decisions make those changes costly.

Structure sustains attention.
Clarity sustains performance.