Museum of Arts & Design Visitor Curation Gallery
In preparation for the presentation of our Museum of Arts & Design visualization this week, I designed a Flash prototype that extends the concept of my original physical piece. Both pieces are designed to be intuitive visual tools that highlight each piece of art, while enabling the user to easily engage with, compare, and contrast each piece of art's data attributes. The physical and screen-based visualizations are both rooted in the concept of enabling museum visitors to explore the MAD collection by curating their own sub-collection of objects. Additionally, both pieces are intended to highlight the diversity within the museum's collection, the richness and complexity of the creative process that generated these works of art, and the concept that each individual can and should experience the collection in their own unique way.
Due to time constraints, I did not yet build out a user interface for the actual creation of a personal collection, focusing instead on the interface that visitors would use to explore the attributes of their own collection once it had been created, and to browse and compare the collections that fellow users had curated. In the prototype interface, there are various ways to explore each collection's pieces and accompanying information (Note that only the first collection, "Circularity," has been fully coded out, so it is the best example to explore.)
Upon opening the tool, the visitor can easily browse a high-level view of each personal collection by clicking it's icon on the left of the main screen. When the larger view of the collection opens, the user can scroll over individual artworks to view detailed information about that piece. Once the visitor has found a collection s/he would like to explore in greater detail, s/he can select from the menu of attributes on the right (Materials, Date Created, Artist Gender). When a category is selected, an animation is activated that rearranges the various artwork images to fit within a pie chart graphic displaying the percentages within that category (e.g., for Date created, each artwork is situated within a pie slice representing the decade of creation). A key to the chart opens below the category name in the menu on the right. Simultaneously, the icon for each collection on the left is replaced with that collection's pie chart for that category, facilitating easy comparison between collection. In addition, a chart displaying the percentages for the entire MAD collection appears at the bottom right--enabling the user to understand each collection within that greater context. In this category view, the details about each piece are still accessible by mousing over each image, or the viewer can discover the exact percentage of each pie slice and the sub-category it represents by mousing over it.
This visualization is designed to not only showcase each piece and represent data about it, but to highlight the personal preferences of each collection's curator, and to enable them to discover things about their own inclinations they may not have known (e.g., discovering that 40% of their collection consists of pieces created in the 1940s, or 60% of the works they chose are textiles). Once trends like this are revealed to the viewer, they may then choose to explore collections by other users who display similar preferences, thereby discovering new works they may be predisposed to appreciate.
As I continue to develop this project throughout the remainder of the semester, I will integrate the entire collection's data, design a usable interface for browsing the entire collection and easily creating personal collections, and rethink the presentation of each collection (e.g., the circular model is not particularly well-suited to square and rectangular photographs). I'll also need to deal with the fact that collections will surely be of significantly varying size, which makes visualization of the type in this prototype problemation. After that, if there is any time left, I would very much like to enhance the social aspect of this tool, enabling users to easily discover other collections similar to their own, browse collections by tags, add comments on other people's collections, etc. When dealing with large collections of any type, I'm a firm believer that social tools can vastly enhance discovery and appreciation.
Museum of Arts & Design Visitor Curation Gallery >>
