Project 2 – Outcome and Ambition

Tasks

• Make and deliver a five minute presentation (Video, Keynote Presentation, Interactive PDF or similar) to evaluate the success of your industry project. Add initial reflections onto the Ideas Wall, to gain peer reflection, and post the final presentation in your blog.
• Communicate an evaluation of the industry set project outcome and reflect on the project evolution, strategy, innovation, user testing, positioning, final delivery and success at reaching the target audience. Post your final analysis in your blog.
• Design and deliver the final outcome of your industry set project. Post visual developments on the Ideas Wall, including the final outcome, and use your blog to reflect on detailed development.

Make and deliver a five minute presentation (Video, Keynote Presentation, Interactive PDF or similar) to evaluate the success of your industry project. Add initial reflections onto the Ideas Wall, to gain peer reflection, and post the final presentation in your blog.

Please see this post for my presentation video.

Communicate an evaluation of the industry set project outcome and reflect on the project evolution, strategy, innovation, user testing, positioning, final delivery and success at reaching the target audience. Post your final analysis in your blog.

Ambition

I would love to carry on this project so that I could:

• Thoroughly embed game principles in the design
• Work with curators to develop a range of levels for the game
• Build a machine-learning database that could generate its own levels
• Test these levels on a wide range of visitors to the Science Museum website and get feedback from possible players
• Develop the game using Unity to improve the visual look of it.

Personal evaluation

• This was an incredibly interesting and in-depth project and to start with I was excited about getting into coding an interface, before realising my time would be better spent concentrating on the ‘bigger picture’ concept.
• I lost time this way by being too concerned by the back-end process and how to demonstrate it rather than the overall final outcome.
• My first iteration linked objects in the game by using the metadata that already exists in the collection, but this was seen as boring and unengaging compared to what it could be.
• The feedback that I gained from John Stack of the Science Museum, games developers and an art director was vital in transforming my final outcome.
• By demonstrating links that would be interesting, the feedback shaped my project and to transform it into a game that people of all ages and backgrounds could interact with.
• My final outcome wandered from my original positioning statement in that it isn’t focussed on being used by intergenerational groups, however the audience has broadened to players of all ages.
• Other concepts I presented did match my positioning statement in this regard more, however initial feedback led me to the concept I did.

Design and deliver the final outcome of your industry set project. Post visual developments on the Ideas Wall, including the final outcome, and use your blog to reflect on detailed development.

Final outcome

Connections

As I got feedback from John Stack and others that linking metadata was not interesting, I decided to borrow a connecting link from James Burke’s Connections TV show in the 90’s to provide an interesting narrative:

Multi-choice

There’s also the option to select a multi-choice answer to make the links, in an easier version of the levels based on the description so that the players have to engage:

Scoring

Correctly linking objects will allow users to score points too:

Takeaway

When the player exits the game, they will have several things to take away with them. One, their score based on the connections of how they performed in the games and how well they navigated around the collections:

Two, a visualisation of the paths they have taken through the collection on each journey so that they can see the objects in perspective and see how far they can go. If the user has had multiple sessions, they can see all their journeys on the map.

Three, a piece of artwork generated from the objects the user has seen in this session viewed in a number of ways, shared on social media:

 

Ideas Wall

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Project 2 – Industry-Led Presentation

Week 11: Design development Part II

Carrying on from my previous post, I am developing the game further…

Tasks

• Make and deliver a five minute presentation (Video, Keynote Presentation, Interactive PDF or similar) to evaluate the success of your industry project. Add initial reflections onto the Ideas Wall, to gain peer reflection, and post the final presentation in your blog.
• Communicate an evaluation of the industry set project outcome and reflect on the project evolution, strategy, innovation, user testing, positioning, final delivery and success at reaching the target audience. Post your final analysis in your blog.
• Design and deliver the final outcome of your industry set project. Post visual developments on the Ideas Wall, including the final outcome, and use your blog to reflect on detailed development.

Analysis of feedback

After getting feedback for my initial response here are the conclusions I can draw:

• Linking on metadata, though simpler, is not engaging or interesting enough on which to base a game
• The links can bounce from one end of the collection to another, and this is not strong enough for a game
• There needs to be more of a narrative between objects and the links between the groups
• Challenges should be more restricted rather than across the whole collection
• Levels and game objects to collect to should be included
• The player needs a takeaway from the game, perhaps as a points score or as a map of the journey they have taken through the network
• Avoid feature creep, and trying to do too much. Start simple.

Connections

As I got feedback from John Stack and others that linking metadata was not interesting, I decided to borrow a connecting link from James Burke’s Connections TV show in the 90’s to provide an interesting narrative:

Multi-choice

There’s also the option to select a multi-choice answer to make the links, in an easier version of the levels based on the description so that the players have to engage:

Scoring

Correctly linking objects will allow users to score points too:

Takeaway

When the player exits the game, they will have several things to take away with them. One, their score based on the connections of how they performed in the games and how well they navigated around the collections:

Two, a visualisation of the paths they have taken through the collection on each journey so that they can see the objects in perspective and see how far they can go. If the user has had multiple sessions, they can see all their journeys on the map.

Three, a piece of artwork generated from the objects the user has seen in this session viewed in a number of ways, shared on social media:

Ideas Wall

Week 10: Design development Part I

The tasks

• Design your selected project concept. Post visual developments on the Ideas Wall and use your blog to elaborate on these experiments.
• Collaborate with key stakeholders to gather feedback and ensure that your project aligns with your target audience. Post any feedback on your blog and analyse how it can inform the delivery of your final outcome.
• Make prototypes and user test your design developments. Post images of these tests on the Ideas Wall, to gain student and staff feedback, and use your blog to rationalise the results.
• Collaborate with peers and staff on the Ideas Wall and engage with relevant research groups, industry professionals or key stakeholders to refine the visual direction of your chosen project brief. Use your blog to elaborate on your discussions.

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Design your selected project concept. Post visual developments on the Ideas Wall and use your blog to elaborate on these experiments.

Make prototypes and user test your design developments. Post images of these tests on the Ideas Wall, to gain student and staff feedback, and use your blog to rationalise the results.

Here are images of my concept. It is a game that manoeuvres between objects in the Science Museum collection to display links and context, and would be designed to run in a web browser (mobile, tablet or desktop):

This is the start of the ‘game’ with an introduction to the concept behind it. I’ve used a similar typeface to the Science Museum typeface, with a serif font for my comments.

I think the easiest way to explain how a player navigates through the programme is a map! This is a sample challenge I built from the actual objects in the Science Museum collection, and hopefully, I could use AI to make more in a real-world context.

This is one ‘start’ object, that shows the meta-data from the Science Museum collection. The description for the object is drop-down, so that the player can easily read about the object, but the main data to contextualise the object is the ‘Details’ section.

At any point, the player can navigate directly to the object page in the main collection so that they can learn more about it.

With this start object, the three possible routes are displayed to the right of the image in a circular rather than rectangular box, with an image and the connecting data item. The image can navigate to that route and takes you to the next page.

This is a mid-challenge object, showing the route behind and ahead. The route could be infinite, but the aim would be to connect objects in six links or less.

Personal feedback

As I write this, I can see that this just looks like a linking archive. To make it into a game, I need to build a section into the UI to show the target object and details, and how many clicks the player has left.

Levels of difficulty

The player would start on an easy level, and build up to hard and harder, which might require them to hit the target object in an exact number of steps, or use just one metadata category, or a certain number of these.

Collaborate with key stakeholders to gather feedback and ensure that your project aligns with your target audience. Post any feedback on your blog and analyse how it can inform the delivery of your final outcome.

The key stakeholder, John Stack, gave a really good feedback session on Monday and I learnt from listening to his feedback to all the projects. He made these points for Jay, and I feel they can be applied to all of us:

• When crowdsourcing, a few people will contribute a lot and most people a little, because they already have a deep level of engagement with the collections. Is the best way to introduce new people to the collection.
• What does the project do in its resting state? For example, a fruit machine in a pub lights up whilst it isn’t being used to pull more people in.
• Is it fulfilling for other people to use if they are not the primary user? My project was originally centred around intergenerational learning, so this is an integral question to me?
• How do you hook in more users, particularly of school age, perhaps by using the curriculum?
• Things need to be simple when they launch, and additional features can be added later.

For me, John really wanted to push the idea further than the metadata. He gave the example of the Science Museum’s Rugged Rover game, where players build a Mars rover and navigate it over rocky terrain. It’s build using actual Mars game physics and the players race against vehicles build by Mars engineers. The game logic used like this makes it constantly satisfying by having difficulty rating that is constantly learning from the players.

Innovation comes from applying one object in a different context, and John gave the example that drones have become cheap because one of the essential components, the gyroscope, has become readily available because it has been developed to such an extent that it is a cheap component of mobile phones. Rather than using the metadata to connect objects, John suggested I try to reach for more interesting connections like this.

Collaborate with peers and staff on the Ideas Wall and engage with relevant research groups, industry professionals or key stakeholders to refine the visual direction of your chosen project brief. Use your blog to elaborate on your discussions.

Feedback from my Art Director:

• • Unsure at first about what connects the object because the links seem very random and to jump all over the place
  • [When I explained about the connections being the metadata] The connections need to be interesting, because “made in France” is too vague
  • Look at a TV show called Connections by James Burke, because he took an object such as lightbulb and explored what technologies needed to be in place, or borrowed from other disciplines, for the invention to take place when it did.
  • By choosing one area per challenge, for example, Telecommunications, the connections would be less random and there would be more opportunity to build a narrative
  • The A to B concept is fine, but it could be more by building in a treasure hunt or players to find, and objects such as “Wally’s phone” [we work at the Where’s Wally? publisher] to add interest.
  • Ensure clear game start- and end-points
  • Build in rewards, like objects, and display them after finishing the game along with a map of the collection network that maps where you have gone on your journey.

Feedback from games designer (edited for clarity):

If you wanted to keep things relatively light and simple, you could look at an engine like Pixi or Melon:

• • https://github.com/kittykatattack/learningPixi
  • http://www.kiwijs.org/documentation/getting-started/

For extra, extra, whizziness you could also consider something like Unity.

If it were me, I’d definitely build it in Unity. Aside from the fact I’ve already built a game in Unity, It will probably be the easiest of the three in the long term. Because it’s so widely supported, there’s all kinds of free/cheap third party plugins that will handle things like camera movement and particle effects etc, so you might actually find that unity is the slightly less intensive code option (Unity pros go for coding in C#, but it has its own version of Javascript that works well enough too)

Feedback from Android app developer and games designer:

Feedback from an educational and pastoral expert (my mum…)(edited for clarity)

1. 1.  For education:  in planning and getting ready to visit the museum, by using the app/website teacher will be able to link students everyday experiences/knowledge of something back to the exhibition they are going to visit ie why are we going to see stuffed animals, why knowledge about collections from the past had increased knowledge and understanding & affected development/progress and how we live today.
   2. Parents/carers taking children to museum – using website will suggest a ‘route’ through the museum, using perhaps less visited exhibits, linking items together. A ‘route’ taking 1 hour or 2 hours (the website would allow a choice of length of visit) would help to focus in on a few things rather than an aimless wander through glass cases. Do you remember going to one London museum and looking at just one section but with notes really being able to study things and making up a story?
   3. Adults – as advertising. “Do you know what links A with B” and having pop-ups to showcase current and upcoming special exhibitions.
   4. Fun! Multi-choice answers, each linked to a different route through the 6
      items. Scores? Leader board as in computer games? Quiz night questions?

Feedback from a systems designer (my dad…) (edited for clarity)

• • I like the fact that I can see where I’ve come from and where I’m going
  • Being a bit slow, it took me a while to realise that you’re using the meta-values to pick any next-hop.
  • In your start-to-end view, I was wondering if displaying the linking category against the connecting line rather than the target picture would make it clearer?
  • How would you filter the next-hop items to just 3 where at least 1 is part of the 6-degrees trail? But I expect this is straying into the technical solution rather than the concept!

I will carry on developing my concept in my next blog post.

Ideas Wall

Week 9: Concept Development

The Tasks

• Select one of your design concepts, which you think will successfully answer your chosen project brief.
• Research innovative design thinking, format, media and production methods to gain a fresh insight into your project direction.

Idea Two – Game experience using objects

Using the objects to go on your own adventure! By building challenges to navigate from one linked object to another, whether by type of object, material, date of origination or other criteria, the user will build up a knowledge of the collection and how its objects are related in history.

Objects could include: navigate from a spoon to a religious icon, from a catalytic converter to the baby weighing scales in fewer than six steps. By gameifying the experience, it presents a challenge to the viewer whilst subtly showing them the collection in its entirety.

How the images could be linked with multiple paths and branches to the finish.

An idea for the object page, with linking objects to the right.

Research innovative design thinking, format, media and production methods to gain a fresh insight into your project direction.

Museum of London: The Great Fire of London in Minecraft

Minecraft, the immensely popular building game, has been used to create an immersive experience by the Museum of London to allow players to get into the thick of the Great Fire of London of 1666.

Three maps offer immersive experiences, allowing players to enter the City of London in 1666 and explore the story of the Great Fire like never before. Uncover the causes of this terrible event, help fight the fire and eventually try your hand at rebuilding London. Each map includes challenges to help players delve deeper into the story and experience what it was like to be part of the Fire of London.

It would be so cool to create something so immersive, however I feel that I don’t have the experience of gaming or the edge of the concept to make it work in this instance. I really rate it for bringing historical experiences to a new generation!

“Showdown! Kuniyoshi vs. Kunisada” at Museum of Fine Arts

At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, visitors were able to view woodcuts from 19th-century Japan and to take a quiz to discover which artist of the discipline they favoured.

The two artists, Kuniyoshi and Kunisada, were friendly rivals under the same artistic master, whose work is often pitted against each other and this exhibition does that. The curators chose 49 pieces of art from each artist, to ensure an even presentation.

Usually, exhibitions try to avoid bias (this exhibition also does) and present an even view, but this goes further to bring to life the artists rivalry and asks the audience to choose which was their favourite. At the time the art was produced, it was used in commercial settings so audience preferences would have gone a long way as to who was commissioned and therefore earned money. The quiz echoes the types of quiz now found on websites such as Buzzfeed where the audience answers questions on Friends characters to find out their favourite kind of potato (imagined concept, but it’s not far off the mark.)

Ideas Wall

Week 8: Concept Development

Distill your research from the previous four weeks, to inspire the concept development of your project brief. Post initial thoughts onto the Ideas Wall for peer reflection.

Collaborate with peers and staff on the Ideas Wall and contact any relevant research groups or industry professionals to seek advice and feedback on the direction of your project brief. Elaborate your discussions in your blog.

Design and deliver a range of concept developments and post them onto the Ideas Wall. Elaborate and expand on any feedback in your blog.

Idea One – Using the Augmented Reality scans to bring the archive to life

As the Science Museum is taking the time to digitally scan some items of its collection, I would like to use this to create a conversation between generations of people about what everyday life has been like, what it is like and what it could be like. The collection of 3D scanned items include an artificial arm, a contraceptive cap, a packet of cigarettes, a car part and a mosquito spray, all of which would be familiar to a UK audience.

The concept would be used out of the Science Museum, for people who cannot access the museum but have a curious mind about what is around them. The users would be able to log onto the system to find objects relating to everyday life and share a screen with their family to see the object in 3D reality. The system would prompt conversation topics such as how the items were used in their lives, what memories they have of them, what it meant for their lives when the item was invented.

The concept does focus on the generality of the object, as the people viewing them are not likely to have come into contact with the same object, but it can promote interesting discussions about life. The viewers can access the specificity of the objects using the metadata that the Science Museum has already built up.

There would be an opportunity for people to contribute their own memories and stories of the items to build up the Science Museum’s knowledge and for other people to view.

Idea Two – Game experience using objects

Using the objects to go on your own adventure! By building challenges to navigate from one linked object to another, whether by type of object, material, date of origination or other criteria, the user will build up a knowledge of the collection and how its objects are related in history.

Objects could include: navigate from a spoon to a religious icon, from a catalytic convertor to the baby weighing scales in fewer than six steps. By gameifying the experience, it presents a challenge to the viewer whilst subtly showing them the collection in its entireity.

Idea Three – Own exhibitions

Based on the idea of families and groups, this concept would allow communities to build their own exhibitions in a virtual collection using the objects from the archive. Imagined as a gallery in the Science Museum, the would-be-curators would be able to favourite objects from the archive and place them into a virtual space that could be navigated using AR or VR or on a display. Each object could have a caption about its relevance in the collection and the collections could be shared online on social media to draw more viewers to the website.

Ideas Wall

Week 7: Positioning and Trends

 

 Tasks

Research current themes, trends and moods relevant to your project requirements and goals. Post your findings on the Ideas Wall and evaluate your research in your blog.

Distill your research, write a positioning statement for your project strategy and post it in your blog.

Imagine three mood boards to contextualise your positioning statement. Post your mood board development on the Ideas Wall and outline the rationale behind your final outcome in your blog.

This is my first experience of a positioning statement, and I’m glad that we had a peer discussion to help learn how to construct one.

Research current themes, trends and moods relevant to your project requirements and goals. Post your findings on the Ideas Wall and evaluate your research in your blog.

Working with the Community and Peer Knowledge

Arts and cultural organisations have had their budgets consistently lowered (74% of arts organisations have been affected by public funding cuts) and so have been looking to extending their partnerships with their community to continue their mission. By bringing in enthusiasts, volunteers and local groups, institutions have the chance to save on staffing cost (sorry, cynicism creeping out here) whilst learning from an untapped collective knowledge.

Rijksmuseum Birdwatching

Projects such as one held by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where bird enthusiasts were brought in to identify and tag bird species in paintings in their vast collection in 2015.

Ex-Warner Project

Closer to home for me, artists Lucy Harrison and Katherine Green started an archiving project centring around “Warner” properties built in the Waltham Forest area of East London from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The Warner properties are a longstanding project of terraced, self-contained flats that allowed people in social housing to live in safe, clean and dignified settings. Many are preserved and are sought after properties in the area.

The project started in collaboration with the Walthamstow Historical Society and sought to capture the previously unrecorded social history and aimed to “document the current residents of ex Warner properties, including long-term renters, new renters, those who recently purchased or who had purchased directly from the Warners.” With further sponsorship from the Arts Council England and local companies, they called out for further contributions and built an app through which participants can explore oral histories and guided walks around the area.

Annotate

The Tate launched AnnoTate, where Zooniverse at the University of Oxford developed a crowdsourced transcription where volunteers can transcribe handwritten letters, notebooks and sketches that “reveal artists’ everyday lives, creative practices and the processes by which renowned works of arty were made”. This is a great project because the Tate gains the digitisation of the collection and the volunteers can learn directly.

The community is still, however, an under-used resource. People go to libraries, museums or archives to learn, but rarely are the stories and knowledge uncovered captured by the institutions themselves. It, therefore, seems like a trend onto which I could jump and fill out the metadata surrounding the Science Museum’s collection.

However, how can I get the target audience of young adults, families with children 8+ and school groups to engage and participate? This type of project seems like the precursor to the one I have been briefed on, where the information is gathered, and the brief I have to engage people with the information collected. Or, is there a way to run the phases co-currently?

Creating Interactive and Interpretive Experiences

The Museum of Photographic Arts’ 7 Billion Others exhibition

There’s a greater recognition of the visitor as an active participant in the art or in the storytelling.

In this project by the National Archives, they built a virtual village to showcase their collection and to engage students with typical life in World War One. Whilst we may here a lot about the trench warfare (and rightly so), history was being lived outside of this, and by briging technology to this project allowed students to connect to a much greater degree.  : https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/building-virtual-first-world-war-village/#more-27243

In a similar veinJISC: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/member-stories-using-digital-archives-to-inspire-students-19-nov-2018

Voice command

The Museums of Modern Art in New York is aiming to improve engagement and navigation around the museum collection for users, by integrating the Amazon Echo with their collections database. This will be particularly useful to those with visual impairment

If people want to interact online, you must be online. If people walk around the gallery staring more at their phone than at the exhibits, you must reach them there. If people are housebound and can’t go to the museum, take the museum to them.

Distill your research, write a positioning statement for your project strategy and post it in your blog.

Positioning statement

Objects are only physical matter until they are imbued with context, stories and meanings from history. For families who wish to explore their social history, this exploration tool for the Science Museum online collection will foster the sharing of personal and family history through the medium of the Science Museum online collections.

 Imagine three mood boards to contextualise your positioning statement. Post your mood board development on the Ideas Wall and outline the rationale behind your final outcome in your blog.

When do we understand technology

We only begin to understand technology when we cease to notice it.
Heidegger

Week 6: Brief and Strategy

The Task

1. Research strategies and project plans used by agencies to reach a global audience. Share your findings on the Ideas Wall and elaborate in your blog.
2. Distill your research to develop your own strategy and project plan for the selected project brief. Write a draft of your strategy and project plan and post it to your blog.
3. Communicate the rationale for your strategy and project plan to be delivered through a five slide Keynote presentation. Record yourself outlining the rationale over five Keynote slides and upload the presentation to your blog.

 

Research strategies and project plans used by agencies to reach a global audience. Share your findings on the Ideas Wall and elaborate in your blog.

Museum Lates

Although this is not a joined strategy (that I can find), the extended opening hours of museums and cultural institutions seen in London has echoed around the world. In Moscow, opening hours extending beyond 6pm have long been considered normal, with some institutions regularly open until 10pm. The first documented late night opening was Night of the Arts in Helsinki, Finland, in 1989.

In London, museums such as the Tate, Science Museum, V&A and Natural History Museum regularly open their gallery doors once a month to allow adults to explore after work and without children. That the days don’t clash indicate that there has been collaboration between the institutions but not a project plan put forward as you might expect.

Often, each night revolves around a certain theme to give each night a focus and to keep the size manageable. Guests are not allowed free range around the museum, and only certain galleries are open to contain the spread of visitors. The main tickets are free, with some reasonably priced VIP tickets with added perks on top to skip queues.

With a growing young population of teetotal young people, and a number who want their social life not to revolve around drinking alcohol, the Lates offer an experience where alcohol is available but not the main focus, where art and culture blend to form an educational and entertaining experience. Music is a key point, with silent discos and DJs being offered at most venues.

I can’t find figures about the increase of visitors that have resulted from Lates nights, however, given that the Science Museum attracts 4,000 people to each of its Lates, it could be far to say that they are reaching young adults who are otherwise on employment when the museum is open.

Lates are offered around the world from US, Mexico, Australia, Russia, Finland and are now seen as an integral part of museum strategy to increase reach, diversify visitors and become community hubs.

AirBnB Louvre

Musee de Louvre in Paris, Europe’s most visited museum, paired up with AirBnb to offer two people an overnight stay in a custom-built pyramid within the famous pyramids and a bespoke tour of the museum.

Given the trend for experiences over possessions, the collaboration works as advertising for both institution and Airbnb to encourage travellers to seek out new experiences that are usually available to leaders of state and celebrities. It shows Airbnb as a company that is global and local and the service to use for an intimate travel experience whilst the Louvre is seen as more accessible to everyday visitors: if you can sleep there, you can be comfortable there.

This experience is part of a series of experiences and concerts to be won through airBnb.

Distill your research to develop your own strategy and project plan for the selected project brief. Write a draft of your strategy and project plan and post it to your blog.

The different methods that John Stack showed us in the tutorial were fascinating, and I plan to map them out to see if there is a gap between what has been considered already.

My main aim is to build a narrative around the images and to allow viewers of the collections to build their own too. The Chrome extension that the Science Museum has developed to show the beauty of randomness.

I would also like to place the items in historical and social context. What memories do people have of the items? What were they produced at the same time as? What similarities are there with other disciplines? How does it fit into human history?

Communicate the rationale for your strategy and project plan to be delivered through a five slide Keynote presentation. Record yourself outlining the rationale over five Keynote slides and upload the presentation to your blog.

Week 5: Critical Reflective Journal

This week I didn’t go to the webinar because I was at a workshop at D&AD run by Dalton Maag, the Brixton-based type foundry.

 

Week 5: Competitive Context

The Task

• Research the requirements of each of the four preselected project briefs. Post initial thoughts onto the Ideas Wall and elaborate with sketches and notes to rationalise your project selection. Add these to your blog.
• Research three competing agencies, studios or practitioners who have created work in a similar field to your selected project brief. Post website links onto the Ideas Wall and critique their work in your blog.
• Distill your research and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of three competing projects and post the results in your blog.
• Communicate a 200 word evaluation for each of the three competing projects, which summarises their strengths and weaknesses. Post the results in your blog, with supporting reference material.

This looks like a great second part of the module and I can’t wait to get stuck in!

Research the requirements of each of the four preselected project briefs. Post initial thoughts onto the Ideas Wall and elaborate with sketches and notes to rationalise your project selection. Add these to your blog.

International Competition (Live)

International Competition (Concluded)

Live Collaboration

Research and Development

Consult experts in your life (from the video by Stuart Tolley)

The project I have chosen to work on is … Research and Development with the Science Museum. As Stuart suggested, I talked to Ben Norland, Executive Art Director, and Maria Soler Canton, my manager, to get their opinions on each of the projects. I always had an instinctive pull towards the Science Museum brief, but I wanted to get unbiased feedback and so although I told Ben and Maria that I had a preference, I didn’t tell them which one I was leaning towards. Luckily, we had similar thoughts on and they identified the Science Museum as one they thought would suit my skills, and the one they would likely choose themselves! Had they had different opinions, I would have listened and considered, as I really respect their views and their measure of me over the time I have been working for them.

• • Research three competing agencies, studios or practitioners who have created work in a similar field to your selected project brief. Post website links onto the Ideas Wall and critique their work in your blog.
  • Distil your research and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of three competing projects and post the results in your blog.
  • Communicate a 200-word evaluation for each of the three competing projects, which summarises their strengths and weaknesses. Post the results in your blog, with supporting reference material.

I’ve tried to go outside the industry of museums and look at how other projects have presented large amounts of information, because I feel a cross-disciplinary approach will be the key to an innovative project.

Project 1: UNIQLO LifeWear Day by Pentagram

“A major exhibition that dramatises and codifies Japanese clothing brand UNIQLO’s LifeWear concept… the large-scale immersive, experiential event showcases UNIQLO’s popular LifeWear concept from three perspectives: Art, Science and Craftsmanship”

A museum? No. A novel way of displaying a collection? Yes. The show is broken down into three sections to show the collection in different lights, art science and craftsmanship. It displayed at Somerset House, a venue that hosts art and fashion displays as well as commercial ventures (such as the Fortnum Christmas Arcade). The exhibition takes the visitor through different immersive experience from a six-metre long area hung with the brand’s AIRism fabric to demonstrate its lightness, an  interactive 3D exploration of HEATTECH and was riot of colourful technology. It also had an area dedicated to Uniqlo’s sustainability programmes such as their Jeans Innovation Centre.

For the cynical, it’s a marketing event for Uniqlo’s products: they will hope for increased social engagement and increased sales. However, to me, it’s a way to really demonstrate the core values of the brand in a non-sales environment and to bridge the gap between everyday apparel and art.

Project 2: Ex-Warner Project

Closer to home for me, artists Lucy Harrison and Katherine Green started an archiving project centring around “Warner” properties built in the Waltham Forest area of East London from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The Warner properties are a longstanding project of terraced, self-contained flats that allowed people in social housing to live in safe, clean and dignified settings. Many are preserved and are sought after properties in the area.

The project started in collaboration with the Walthamstow Historical Society and sought to capture the previously unrecorded social history and aimed to “document the current residents of ex Warner properties, including long-term renters, new renters, those who recently purchased or who had purchased directly from the Warners.” With further sponsorship from the Arts Council England and local companies, they called out for further contributions and built an app through which participants can explore oral histories and guided walks around the area.

Project 3: Navigating Nightingale

The free app Navigating Nightingale was created by Archives, AIM25 and the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing to provide an augmented-reality walking tour of central London, following in the footsteps of the pioneering nurse, Florence Nightingale. The app includes innovative features including a cartoon that ‘comes to life’ and sophisticated map overlays. It is accessible, as it is free, and draws on the archive of historical photos, illustrations and stories to bring Nightingale, the archive and the history of the city at the time and allows people to physically explore the area rather than visit the museum.

Its drawbacks could be considered that it is available on iOS but not Android, so it can only be used by users of that operating system, though it could be expanded. The app also focusses on Florence Nightingale, which is its strength and its weakness, that it would only appeal to a small number of users. Overall, I think this is a great use of archival material to bring to life a central character in British history outside of the museum.

References

Making Historical Collections Accessible. (2019). 1st ed. [ebook] London: Wiley Digital Archives, pp.1-12. Available at: http://images.news.wiley.com/Web/WileyEnterprise/%7B06852548-647f-4642-9e4c-bf20ca43290c%7D_W269M_Wiley_Digital_Archives_Ebook_030718.pdf [Accessed 26 Oct. 2019].

 

Project 1 – Filling in the Gaps Presentation