IBM US OPEN WATSON

The Brief: The USTA requires the US Open to offer a captivating viewer experience both on-site and online, aiming to engage new audiences and enhance global tennis growth, catering to millions of fans worldwide.

This year centered around Watson, IBM’s suite of artificial intelligence tools. How can we effectively present tennis data while demonstrating the concept of artificial intelligence to the general public?

Our Response:

Let’s enable tennis enthusiasts to interact with Watson, who will craft their portrait using a tennis ball emoji.

Drawing inspiration from the triumphant Watson Cognitive Photobooth project, we opted to leverage Watson for tennis-related data. What attributes define a world champion? Equipping Watson with an extensive array of available data points concerning past U.S. Open participants, we aimed to deduce the distinct traits of each player and assess your proximity to a tennis star.

Upon entering the booth, users would engage in a dialogue with Watson, answering 5 open-ended questions to facilitate trait determination via tone analysis. Following completion, the backend would process the data, presenting percentage breakdowns for each trait. Watson would subsequently pair you with a tennis professional whose data bore the closest resemblance to yours. Witnessing fans’ elation upon being matched with their favorite player or a compatriot highlighted the potency of A.I.

Each fan received a printed poster of their portrait along with a shareable photo directly delivered to their device.

As the Executive Producer, my responsibilities encompassed gauging feasibility and scope, orchestrating web application development, overseeing Watson Booth fabrication, managing on-site events, and handling logistics.

ClientIBMServicesExperiential / Artificial Intelligence / Web DevelopmentProd CoInternal / Th Productions