DIA UI DESIGN Questions - next steps!

Mon Oct 26 16:18:35 UTC 2009

Hi Jennifer,

This is great feedback!  Our team had started rethinking the user's experience using the questions model and had similar reservations about the how this approach would effect the final design.  

Our redesign process from now until next week will focus on drawing (pencil and paper) many different solutions, then we'll discuss the possibilities of each with the larger FE team to select a few options, and then we'll present these design options to you and the larger DIA team for further feedback.

Our design philosophy is very open, so if you see a place in our process where you might want to be a participant please let us know and we'll skype you into the conversation!!

Again, Thanks for the feedback!  

Best, Vicki 

Vicki Moulder
School of Interactive Arts & Technology 
Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC, Canada
www.interactionart.org
vmoulder at sfu.ca

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jennifer Czajkowski" <Czajkows at dia.org>
To: "Jennifer Czajkowski" <Czajkows at dia.org>, "Victoria Moulder" <vmoulder at sfu.ca>, "Amy Foley" <FOLEY at dia.org>, "David Penney" <PENNEY at dia.org>, "Swarupa Anila" <SAnila at dia.org>
Cc: "fluid-work" <fluid-work at fluidproject.org>, "Kevin Muise" <kmuise at sfu.ca>, "leahmaestri" <leahmaestri at gmail.com>, "James William Yoon" <james.yoon at utoronto.ca>
Sent: Thursday, 22 October, 2009 12:57:44 GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: RE: DIA UI DESIGN Questions

Hi Vickie and team, 

We just had a long meeting here to try and think through the flow of how an actual experience with the kiosk would work, taking into consideration the wireframes you shared last week and the questioning and labeling issues. Here’s the latest: 

We are having trouble with the questions. We want to avoid having visitors answer a load of questions up front, mainly because we want to have them spend no more than about 3 minutes at the kiosk, and we don’t want to bore them with a lot of questions when what they want to do is look at art. In addition, all the questions we come up with don’t seem to give us the information we need to make truly “customized” experiences. Bottom line: we aren’t seeing how we can put together a short string of questions that will lead to a satisfactory “custom” experience for visitors. 

We are committed to offering visitors some kind of customized tours that build on the existing “big ideas” already conveyed in the galleries. We want visitors to be able to link objects in ways that the current, physical gallery configuration does not encourage. So, as I said in the email message below, it would be great for people to choose a topic or issue, and then explore it in the European, Contemporary, and African galleries, for instance. This is impossible to do with the current physical layout – without a tour guide. 

Keeping that in mind, here’s an experience flow we talked about today: 

1. Visitors approach kiosk (which clearly communicates the kind of experience outcome that will result) 

2. They choose from a menu of issues or topics (based on cross-cultural, cross-collection themes such as “Power and Politics”, “A Day in the Life”, or “Death and Afterwards”) 

3. After choosing “Power and Politics,” they get a group of maybe 10 thumbnail images. Each represents a gallery that has a “Power and Politics” theme. Scrolling over an image, they get basic info about the gallery the object is in. They can choose to add this gallery to their tour. The visitor can choose any number of thumbnail images, which represent galleries, to string together to make a tour. 

4. They can then go back and choose another topic from the menu and create another tour in the same way. Up to 3, as you proposed in the wireframes. 

We are not wed to this exact plan – just offer it to the team to show that we are interested in allowing as much customization as possible, but at the gallery level, not the object level. And we want the visitors to create as much of the tour as possible – that’s why we want them to choose the galleries, not just a pre-existing tour that we’ve created. By creating 2 or 3 tours this way, visitors can link up 2 or 3 themes they are interested in, creating yet another layer of personalized linkages. 

Very interested to hear what the larger team thinks, and what ideas this may spur. Very sorry if the questions from last email led you down the wrong path. 

Happy to have a phone conversation if you’d like. 

jennifer 

From: Jennifer Czajkowski 
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 2:32 PM 
To: 'Victoria Moulder'; Amy Foley; David Penney; Swarupa Anila 
Cc: fluid-work; Kevin Muise; leahmaestri; James William Yoon 
Subject: RE: DIA UI DESIGN Questions 

Hi Vicki, 

Nice to hear from you again. We're planning a real working session on Thursday of this week to start deeper thinking about the questions and links between connections, so I'll take a shot here, but know that they might morph a bit. The idea for the questions is to get a snapshot of the visitor in order to propose a few tours/themes that they might want to link up and explore. So a multiple choice format might look something like this: 

I'm here at the museum today because: 

· I want to be inspired and reinvigorated 

· I'm meeting a group of friends or a friend to spend some time together 

· My mom/spouse/friend made me 

· I want my kids to see art and/or learn something 

· I want to learn something new and surprising 

· I’m a teacher and want to link the collection to my curriculum 

I come to the DIA 

· Never – this is my first time 

· Once a year 

· Frequently – I know my way around 

Then maybe they choose between a series of paired images of works of art: 

· Are you more curious about this (Bouguereau Nut Gatherers , very academic 19 th century painting) or this (African FireSpitter Mask )? 

· Which do you have more questions about, this (Rothko painting) or this (French 18 th century porcelain)? 

Do those questions/activities help? 

In answer to your second question, I would avoid the collections names altogether and go with short thematic headings for ideas/themes. I’ve attached a “big ideas” document that is about 85% accurate at the moment. It should give you an idea of how our individual galleries are organized within the larger categories of “African”, “Asian”, “American”. For this program, I don’t think we can handle including every individual gallery/theme. We’d select from these and give them shorter names. For example, “AFRICA #2: ARTS OF LEADERSHIP AND STATUS” could become “African Leadership” and we could link it with a gallery in late 19 th century European called “Art and French Politics” and “Building Empires” in the ancient Greek and Roman section for a tour about Leadership and Power. Does that make sense? So we are kind of mashing up collections by theme, in ways that may be surprising and eye-opening. We could also include Mike Kelley’s contemporary piece that is critical of the U.S. first Bush administration in the 1980s. 

Interested to hear what the team thinks about this. 

jennifer 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Victoria Moulder [mailto:vmoulder at sfu.ca] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 1:27 PM 
To: Jennifer Czajkowski; Amy Foley 
Cc: fluid-work; Kevin Muise; leahmaestri; James William Yoon 
Subject: DIA UI DESIGN Questions 

Hi Jenifer and Amy; 

Hope this email finds you in the best of spirits. We're reworking the wireframes and have questions in regards to the presentation of gallery information which requires your input: 

1) Can you give us some examples of questions we could use to filter a person's initial selection? 

2) What do you think would be more effective having people click on a collections or themes/gallery location? Also could you confirm that the use of these terms is correct? 

Much Thanks, Vicki 

COLLECTIONS 

===================== 

* Africa, Oceania and the Indigenous Americas 

* American Art 

* The Arts of Asia and the Islamic World 

* European Art 

* Prints, Drawings, and Photographs 

* General Motors Center for African American Art 

* The James Pearson Duffy Department of Contemporary Art 

* Performing Arts 

LOCATIONS 

====================== 

ABOUT CHILDREN [S250] 

AFRICAN [N100] 

AFRICAN [N101] 

AFRICAN AMERICAN [N281] 

AFRICAN AMERICAN [N282] 

AFRICAN AMERICAN [W274] 

AMERICAN [W280] 

AMERICAN [W282] 

AMERICAN [W284] 

AMERICAN [W284] 

AMERICAN [W284] 

AMERICAN [W285] 

AMERICAN [W290] 

AMERICAN [W293] 

AMERICAN [W264] 

AMERICAN [W270] 

AMERICAN [W271] 

AMERICAN [W272] 

AMERICAN [W273] 

AMERICAN [W261] 

ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN [S201] 

ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN [S202] 

ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN [S2AA] 

British Art Gallery (S381) [S381] 

CONTEMPORARY [N240] 

CONTEMPORARY [N241] 

CONTEMPORARY [N250] 

CONTEMPORARY [N284] 

CONTEMPORARY [N285] 

CONTEMPORARY [N286] 

CONTEMPORARY [N221] 

DUTCH GOLDEN AGE [S380] 

East/West Corridor Outside Lecture/Recit [W1A] 

EGYPTIAN [W160] 

ERA OF REVOLUTION [S301] 

ERA OF REVOLUTION [S331] 

EUROPEAN : MEDIEVAL [C263] 

EUROPEAN : MEDIEVAL [C263] 

EUROPEAN : MEDIEVAL [W242] 

EUROPEAN : MEDIEVAL [W251] 

EUROPEAN : RENAISSANCE [W220] 

EUROPEAN : RENAISSANCE [W230] 

EUROPEAN : RENAISSANCE [W231] 

EUROPEAN : RENAISSANCE [W232] 

EUROPEAN : RENAISSANCE [W233] 

EUROPEAN : RENAISSANCE [W234] 

EUROPEAN : RENAISSANCE [W240] 

EUROPEAN : RENAISSANCE [W241] 

EUROPEAN : RENAISSANCE [W241] 

European Decorative Arts Court (S350) [S350] 

European Decorative Arts Court (S350) [S350] 

European Decorative Arts Court (S350) [S350] 

FASHIONABLE LIVING (including KANZLER) [S330] 

Gothic Chapel (W252) - EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL [W252] 

Great Hall [W200]'5847'>HIGBY COTTAGE - AMERICAN [W260] 

Kresge Court [W150]'5738'>Kresge Court [W150] 

Kresge Court [W150] 

Lawn areas border John R Street [JONR] 

MODERN [C233] 

MODERN [C234] 

MODERN [C235] 

MODERN [C236] 

MODERN [N230] 

MODERN [N220] 

NATIVE AMERICAN [S130] 

NATIVE AMERICAN [S131] 

Northwest Lawn at corner of Woodward and [LAWN] 

Octagonal Graphic Arts Gallery, East of [W131] 

Octagonal Graphic Arts Gallery, West of [W132] 

Rivera Court [C200] 

Schwartz Galleries (W130) - PRINTS AND D [W130] 

Stairway and Landings inside Whitby Hall [WS11] 

Whitby Hall - North Drawing Room (W263) [W263] 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Victoria Moulder" <vmoulder at sfu.ca> 

To: "Jennifer Czajkowski" <Czajkows at dia.org> 

Cc: "Swarupa Anila" <SAnila at dia.org>, "David Penney" <PENNEY at dia.org>, "Madeleine Winslow" <MWinslow at dia.org>, "Amy Foley" <FOLEY at dia.org>, "Jess Mitchell" <jess at jessmitchell.com>, "Colin Clark" <colin.clark at utoronto.ca>, "fluid-work" <fluid-work at fluidproject.org> 

Sent: Wednesday, 14 October, 2009 15:01:30 GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific 

Subject: Re: DIA advance organizers 

Hi Jenifer et al, 

Thank you for another fantastic meeting!! It is truly remarkable to be working in partnership with all of you at the DIA, along side a global coalition of designers and developers. 

The “advance organizers” documentation will be very helpful. Our design team is meeting this Friday to discuss strategies/tools for working through the next wireframe iteration. Following this meeting we'll send you an update, with next steps and a possible meeting time. 

Best, Vicki 

Vicki Moulder 

School of Interactive Arts & Technology 

Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC, Canada 

www.interactionart.org 

vmoulder at sfu.ca 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Jennifer Czajkowski" <Czajkows at dia.org> 

To: "Jess Mitchell" <jess at jessmitchell.com>, "Colin Clark" <colin.clark at utoronto.ca>, vmoulder at sfu.ca 

Cc: "Swarupa Anila" <SAnila at dia.org>, "David Penney" <PENNEY at dia.org>, "Madeleine Winslow" <MWinslow at dia.org>, "Amy Foley" <FOLEY at dia.org> 

Sent: Wednesday, 14 October, 2009 13:54:57 GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific 

Subject: DIA advance organizers 

Thanks to you and the rest of the team for another great meeting today. I really appreciate the enormous brain power you all are putting into this, and it is so very cool that smart people all over the world (literally) are working together to create this thing that we will test here in Detroit. 

During the meeting today I mentioned that we had “advance organizers” in the galleries, and that they seemed to correspond to a page in the wireframes where visitors were given a bit of information about a tour, to help them decide whether they wanted to add that tour to their “my tours” list. Here are pdfs of a few, along with the logic that goes into them. I thought the parallels were interesting and might help as you think through the details. The AOs are about 40cm high by 75cm wide and are located on stands at entrances to major suites of galleries. 

Could you please share with the rest of the team? 

Thanks, 

jennifer 

Jennifer Wild Czajkowski 

Director, Interpretive Programs 

Dept of Learning & Interpretation 

313.833.5989 