Interactive Catalog - The R. Buckminster Fuller Exhibition

By Sijie Yang | Jacob Glass | Robyn Evans | Matt Jennex

This was a two-week HCI/d project in which we collaborated with graphic designers from the School of Fine Arts at Indiana University. We were given this hypothetical scenario as the background of our design task - "The Indiana University Art Museum is the site of an exhibition of the life and work of R. Buckminster Fuller. The exhibition will take place in the Fall of 2014. The exhibition will be funded with support from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers." Together with the graphic designer assigned to our team, we needed to design an interactive exhibition “catalog” for this event. The catalog should include title “page”, contents “page”, three interior “pages” and all exhibition “partners” should be acknowledged.

Initially we exchanged our opinions on the design process from both interaction as well as graphic design perspectives. After everyone agreed that we were on the same page, each team member generated several design directions individually based on our research on exemplars and on-site ethnographic study. Then the direction of focusing specifically on how people themselves interact with exhibits in the age of mobile technology and social media was decided. During the storyboarding session where we were trying to come up with the holistic experience of our personas, the concept of allowing users to build a mobile catalog that provides context appropriate information on exhibits, and encouraging camera use so that the visitors are allowed to “build their own catalog” was finally proposed.

Three participants were invited to use our paper prototypes to test the usability of our catalog. By taking their performance and comments into consideration, we finalized the design and made the digital mockup.