THE FUTURE OF WEB EXHIBITIONS
and
the polynational war memorial
My examwork is coming up next semester and a part of my project will be to create an interactive webexhibition toghether with an artist, as a part of his project "The Polynationell War Memorial" (http://www.war-memorial.net/).
About the project
Polynational War Memorial
This is a part of a bigger project for the swedish artist Jon Brunberg, called The Polynational War Memorial. It is a process-based, multidisciplinary and long-term art project with the objective to create a proposal for an updateable memorial complex commemorating all killed military personnel and civilians in all wars fought from 1945. The Polynational War Memorial would ideally be the main memorial site for commemoration of victims of war in the world. It should function as a bridge between veterans, relatives, and politicians from a broad range of nations involved in conflict and contribute to a profound level of understanding about the consequences and mechanisms of war.
The ideal site for an exhibition of a resulting proposals would in the artists opinion be the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The ultimate vision is however be that the memorial is actually built sometime in the future. This requires of course a significantly larger budget and a very large portion of goodwill from all people and nations that the memorial involves. These processes are certainly highly complex but if sufficient funds are raised and negotiations are successful the memorial might perhaps be in place already by 2015.
The web exhibition
Jon Brunberg is working with architects, drawing and planning the Memorial. He is modelling the whole thing in 3D, and wants to showcase it online. This is where I come in. I am suppose to plan and build the web exhibition part of the site, so that it will have interesting, captivating and immersing interactivity and good usability, as it is my exam work as an interaction designer. (I am thinking that i should write my thesis about the possibilities of web exhibitions and interactivity or possible ways of storytelling in web exhibitions or something like that and then implement some of my findings in the web exhibition. But I’m not really sure.) I will be producing the web exhibition together with Jon Brunberg and Riksutställningar (the Swedish government agency responsible for producing exhibitions).
Strategy//week2
Site objectives
The site’s objective is to showcase the Polynational War Memorial to the public, creating a buzz about it and about the real world exhibition which hopefully is going to be touring the country. But to promote the live exhibition is not its main objective. If it was we could build a simple promotional site instead. This will be an exhibition that stands on its own two legs. It will contain all the information that the live exhibition will contain. The difference will lie in the two medias different interactive and technical possibilities.
Therefore, the websites objective also is to inspire people to think about various aspects of the subject of war, creating a buzz about the topic of war, and awake public discussions on the subject.
Then of course, the end objective is to get to exhibit the whole memorial proposal in the United Nations Headquarters in New York. In order to do that, there is a selling aspect to consider. It seems like the site should both be selling and informing. It should try to get people enthusiastic about the idea, but the idea includes a lot of information that it has to convey in an intriguing way.
Personal objectives
I’ve been interested in exhibition design for a few years now and especially in how to create and design experiences, with the help of interaction design, in exhibitions. I’ve done a few projects on the subject and now for my graduation project, I want to continue working on exhibition design, but at the same time find a new angle by bringing my attention to web exhibitions.
My thought so far has been to use the website as some kind of playground for my research, because the research paper is the most important part of my exam work. And I’ve been thinking that I could use the website to exemplify my research findings by implementing them. I think that the Polynational War Memorial is a good project to exemplify interactive possibilities in online exhibitions, because it is an exhibition that has a lot to gain by being in the virtual reality. I just have to extract and emphasize those parts.
User needs
Since the site is going to be directed to the public, I will need to figure out what people will be likely to visit the site. To get to know the user I will do some research. Who is likely to visit an online art exhibition? What age are they? What are their interests? What kind of computer skills do they have? And so on… I will also create some personas and scenarios. My guess is that I will generally deal with intellectual adults who have an interest in culture but not always in computers. My stereotype visual is someone who reads five pages a minute, but never has been able to put ikea furniture together. In that case I can fill the place with information as long as I make the navigation easy enough.
Return of Investment (ROI)
If the whole site is up and running in time and I get my exam I'll count it as success.
Scope//week3
Personas and Scenarios
Philip, 40 years. Project Manger.
He uses computers and the web to find information. He’s an efficient person with a great history interest.
Philip finds the page because of his history interest. He wants information and facts about actions taken place, when, what and way. He first uses the main menu and the sub links presented on the page but soon change to the search engine. He finds the search engine more efficient because he knows what his looking for. He would like to go through the whole site but time is pressing.
Liza, 27 years. High School teacher.
Liza is a lengthy person with a small interest in computers. She uses MSN and mail but that’s it. She is exploring the website and the exhibition before taking her history students there for a school excursion.
Liza wants practical information, a short summary of the content inside the exhibition. She doesn’t want to explore the whole page or the exhibition. She finds the “About” link on the first page that gives her a brief information of the exhibition. She decides to print it out and read it later since her next class is about to start soon.
Claire, 62 years. Owner of a small art gallery.
She is an active and talkative person. She is interested in computers but has no experience. She was told about this exhibition from a friend and wants to have a look.
Claire figures out how to find the page with some help from her son-in-law. She directly enters the exhibition because she wants to take the whole tour and explore the content. Inside she can walk around between the different rooms by simply use next and previous links. Claries visit becomes a rich and fulfilling experience for her and she gets inspired to write Jon Brunberg a letter telling him how much she enjoyed it.
Analysis
From these short scenarios I got that the page needs:
- Search engine as a complement to the menu to fast find information if a visitor knows what to look for.
- A summary of the content in an “about” link.
- Print out option of content.
- Easy and clear navigation for those without web experience.
Since I will work on the web exhibition part of the site I will need to find more personas like Claire, who was the only one out of the three who entered it. But it's good to have the other personas as well just to realize which people I am not aiming for. I am not aiming for the stressed and computeruninterested it seems...
Competitive analysis with other interactive online exhibitions
Churchill and the Great Republic
The exhibition has divided itself into three different ways of storytelling. You can choose to follow his life story trough the timeline of his life, themes in his life, or objects related to him. Even though you chose to walk one of the paths from the beginning, there is a lot of interconnectedness and you can jump between the paths throughout your visit.
The site uses flash, video clips, voice overs, texts, icons and bakes it into a interactive but organized creation. The storytelling works and with the amount of information the site contains, I could stay there for hours if I had an interest in Churchill (or was writing some sort of report). Also it doesn’t have the common flash problem with a lot of loading time.
Slave Narratives
This exhibition uses background music, more dramatic voice overs and actor voice overs to reach immersive ness. It contains no pictures or videos. The interaction is limited and allowes the visitor to chose which story to listen to and whether the text should be visible or not. The artsy take is nice but the emphazise on sound makes me miss the pictures…
The creators explain:
“A functional but understated graphic approach keeps the focus on the narratives, while presenting additional information such as transcripts, biographies, and source material. An "audio only" mode creates a more contemplative environment. An HTML version allows researchers and others to easily access and print the materials. All of the content is stored in database allowing for simulataneous updates.”
Traditions of the sun
This exhibition on the other hand is full to the brim with material such as pictures, videos, texts, maps, and the material is always entangled in some exploratory interactivity. It is a highly educational site, and of course offers a very entertaining way of learning. But with the educational goal they seem to have excluded all kind of drama like music or even voice overs. There are no sounds and I kind of miss it.
The creators explain:
“Users can pan and zoom the satellite image and click on points of interest, bringing up hundreds of images, QuickTime VR, or timelapse videos and captions. Using detailed satellite images visitors explore the ancient Maya cities of the Yucatan such as Chichén Itza, Uxmal, Dzibilchaltun, and Mayapan. Images and other multimedia can be viewed in full screen mode, revealing image sequences and related media. This time-lapse video shows the light and shadow serpent which is cast on El Castillo at Chichen Itza each equinox. A comprehensive timeline helps provide a historical context for exploring the great Mayan cities of the Yucatan. An interactive caledar allows visitors to convert calendar dates into the two Mayan calendars; the Long Count and the Calendar Round.”
Kiki Smith – Prints, Books and Things
This one is especially interesting since it is an art exhibition and there are so many online art exhibitions out there just putting pictures in rows. The site uses background sound that gives a kind of contemporary museum feeling, but only plays in the beginning, which works really well. With basic but well-tuned interactions and layered storytelling, where her printmaking process adds extra fullness, gives the exhibition a nice depth. I like this one.
The creators explain:
“Rather than just offering snapshots of Smith’s artwork, the concept for the online exhibition was to create a contiguous and fluid approach to offer visitors a truly engaging experience. Utilizing Flash MX with Zoomify, visitors are transported into the online gallery with the ability to zoom into each artwork, bringing the smallest details of the artist’s work to life. Visitors can explore the virtual “gallery walls” following a seamless journey through the landscape of each theme, zooming and panning from one view to the next. Through video footage of the artist working in print workshops and details of two prints in various stages of development, visitors experience Smith’s creative process firsthand. People hear Smith, see her working, and are immersed in the layered approach of printmaking.”
XYZ
This one is not really an exhibition, but an experiment in digital storytelling and I think it is visualizing the possibilities in an inspiring way. I’ll keep this just as a source of inspiration.
The creators explain:
“XYZ is an investigation into user navigation and how a story’s responsiveness impacts audience experience. Users can select any of the three triptych panels from a menu screen that merges three Cartesian coordinates. In one story, a linear narrative is explored along the x-axis. In another, users can navigate a different narrative through both the x- and y-axes. The third story lets users zoom in and out of the z-axis. The site was developed in Flash, which allows for seamless responsiveness between the user and story. Such reactivity creates a continuum of interactivity, where the story reacts to the user without requiring a proactive mouse click.”
Analysis
Even though the exhibitions I found were indeed interactive, the interaction technology was for the most part pretty basic and not that groundbreaking. Most interactive exhibitions seem to put their focus on the storytelling part. And the storytelling was more varied, but still not as inspiring as the xyz experiment was. I think I need to look for some more groundbreaking projects.
Functional requirements
Content
Except for the 3d models, which the user should be able to interact with in some way, it has been proposed that the site will contain various war-related video interviews, still images with voice over, and text interviews, all on the topic of war. It has also been proposed that there should be some 3d and 2d animations, satellite images, maps, drawings, links to models at google earth to help exhibit the monument itself.
The web exhibition, like the project itself, is based on two things; discussing and informing about war, and showing the idea of the monument.
Content list
3d models______________________________________________________________________________
- Exhibition area
- Scene 3: The Polynational War Memorial
- Infrastructure, places, parts
- Scene 4: The Interreligious Centre
- Showing the different parts of the complex; interior and exterior content.
- Scene 5: The Museum and the University
- Showing the different parts of the buildings: interior and exterior content.
- Scene 6: The Main Monument
- Showing the different parts of the buildings: interior and exterior content.
Still images______________________________________________________________________________
- Photos with voice over
- Scene 1: Background to contemporary conflicts, the new wars etc
- Scene 2: The Holocaust Monument in Berlin
- Satellite pictures
- Maps
- Drawings
Video__________________________________________________________________________________
- Interviews
- With Peter Tonkin
- With Sture Koinberg
- 2D animation (?)
Audio__________________________________________________________________________________
- Interviews
- With priests at the Arlanda chapel
- With Stellan Vinthagen Padrigu
- Voice Overs
- Scene 1 and 2 (see above)
Text___________________________________________________________________________________
- Interviews
- With John Sloboda, Iraq Body Count
- With OBRA architects
- With Mary Zerkel Eyes Wide Open
- With the designers at Testbedstudio
- With the designers at SERVO
- Facts and information (?)
- Information about the live exhibition (?)
- Summary of the content in an “about” link.
- Tour plan
- Print out option
Links__________________________________________________________________________________
- Models at Google Earth
- Related information, tips
- To www.war-memorial.net
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Software
Flash 8 - Actionscript 2.0
Adobe Creative Suite 2.0
Dreamwaver 8 (xhtml1.0 transitional and css 2.0 valid)
3D software (not sure which one)
Non-functional requirements
Appearance Requirements: the exhibition should look attractive to people between 25 and 40 years of age.
Style Requirements: the exhibition should influence the user to get into an idealistic, conscious and imaginative mood. It should have an experimental and imaginative style and feeling. It should also at the same time have an air of credibility and integrity, because of the serious topic it concerns and because the users should not feel that they need to question the facts and information that the exhibition enfolds.
Ease of use: the product (the exhibition) should make the users want to use it. They should also get a feeling of satisfaction while they are using it.
Personalization and Internationalization Requirements: the user should be able to choose between English or Swedish. Videos in Swedish should be subtitled and texts translated.
Learning Requirements: if there will be any need for instructions before entering the exhibition part of the site, they should be short enough not to take away from the experience and the transparency of the system.
Capacity requirements: The product shall cater for a maximum of 100 simultaneous users.
Requirements for Interfacing with Adjacent Systems: The products shall work on the last four releases of the five most popular browsers.
Content requirements
Jon Brunberg developes the content such as 3D models, images, texts, videos, interviews and audio. The size of the content will be decided by him. One of my challenges is to make it work effectively on the net, without huge loading time and so forth. I work in flash to create the interactivity inside the 3D models. The site will also contain an index page with some text information, a search engine and polls, and will link to: 1. the web exhibition, 2. an "about" page, 3. an archieve section with texts, video and audio on the subject of war which you can search through with the search engine, 4. a section for uploading texts and images, and 5. a discussion forum. All of this will be Jon Brunbergs or Riksutställningars webgroups, or an external programmers responsability. The web site should be online for at least two years. During this time period the exhibition part of the site shouldn't need to be updated.
Structure//week4
Interaction Design
The interactivity is the tricky part to talk about at this point. This is what I will research and brainstorm for a couple of months... But the basics is that the visitors will walk around inside 3D models and might move in different layers of x, y and z. They will interact with objects in one layer, and view information like videos, photos and texts in another, inside the objects you could say. There will need to be some kind of interaction language that they will understand intuitively.
Information Architecture
Since it is a park with buildings that the visitors will move around in I try to show the structure of it below. The entrance will be in the Interfaith Centre. But most central in the map is the park, since the visitors will need to cross it when they want to go from one building to another. Inside the buildings are objects, indicated by blue dots on the map below. When you interact with them you get information of different sorts.
Links