A Day at the MoMA

In an ongoing survey of museum companion applications, I made use of the official MoMA companion application during my visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I'm actually smartphone-less right now, so I rented out (for no charge) a new iPod touch from the MoMA with the museum's companion application installed. The iPod I rented came with a neck strap and a pair of headphones... Somewhat reluctantly I put the device around my neck and ventured off into the museum.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed wearing the device around my neck. This allowed consistent access to the application, making it much less intrusive than taking out my smart phone. As a result I found myself using the app to take pictures as I made my way around the museum. I'm used to using the iPhone 4, so I really also enjoyed the large amount of screen real estate on the new apple device. 

Three stills of the MoMa App (courtesy of Rachel Sekai of Cooper Hewitt Labs)

The primary use case in the app is getting supporting content while viewing an artwork. To do this, you can enter a numeric code from the placard into the app and you will go right to the artwork's profile page. Here you can listen to audio content from the museum's curators. I had my first digital docent experience while looking at Picasso's Girl in a Mirror, one of my favorite paintings. The museum's (European) curator was talking me through a visual analysis of the work while I was digesting it myself. If there weren't an audio element to the application and I was forced to just read about the piece in the app, I would have been likely to forego doing so, particularly because the application doesn't make the accompanying text analysis of a work very easy to digest. I'm not super keen on having art explained to you, but I definitely enjoyed the experience of viewing an artwork while listening to the museum's curators. However, I didn't make use of it too extensively.

Images of Claude Monet's Water Lillies taken in the app.

From the artwork's profile page I could favorite the work to view later. In this fashion I went through the museum, locating work's I enjoyed and saving them into the application. I had just seen a Water Lilly painting by Claude Monet in the Cleveland Museum of Art and remembered that the MoMa has an entire triptych of his, so I definitely wanted to check that out. Using the app I searched for "Monet Water Lilly" and found that it was two galleries away, so I decided to skip ahead to check that out. One definite downside is that the application doesn't locate you in the museum, so I had to try to figure out where I was on the current floor based on the entire floor layout (total pain point in my ass). Before I knew it I had viewed Monet's Water Lillies and snapped two really great images of them using the application.

My favorite part of the application was the ability to share my entire experience through social media very easily. I signed in with my email address and was able to view a digital artifact of my entire visit through the internet. Revisiting my trip at home was really great and very easy to do. The app enhanced my experience by being so easy to use. I now have pictures that document my trip through the MoMA that I wouldn't have bothered taking if I wasn't using the application. 

Click here to check out the document of my MoMa trip! 

http://www.moma.org/path/208CB274-D058-416F-B96C-C0BCBFA166EC

Alive at Gallery One

I visited Gallery One today at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Gallery One is the latest in interactive museum experiences. The experience was really innovative. I, as a museum goer, was actively curating my way through the museum's extensive collection. It began with the large interactive touch screen wall which displays over 3,800 of the museums 40k+ works. Viewing such a significant body of work really let me dictate what works I had to see vs. galleries that I didn't necessarily need to visit. Placing the iPad we rented on the stand in front of the wall, the wall became our pool of artists and we were the curators. I didn't realize how to create a tour from the works we selected, so we had to manually check what galleries the works were featured in  and go from there. 

The functionality such as scanning works to get points of information was a really great feature, though it only existed for a small portion of the works. 

As a companion, I found the iPad to be very informative. I would often find myself reading descriptions of works from the iPad itself instead of the note cards on the wall. The navigation occasionally hiccuped, which prevented me from quickly accessing metadata about the gallery I was in. 

The whole experience leveraged the latest technology. Microsoft Kinects let users recreate works of art through body gestures and movements. I reconstructed (and customized) a clay sculpture from scratch, from rolling out the clay to placing all the features. I loved the work so much that I added my own likeness to the piece (example seen below). 

Points of contention with the UI/UX. The lack of general gallery pages in the iPad application was unfortunate, as I would have liked to browse the galleries from the iPad and create a tour on the fly. Instead we got narrow columns with featured works of the galleries. Additionally, the lack of an easy way to export my favorite works and artists that I saved during my trip was a missed opportunity to really bridge the experience between museum viewing and continued interests. 

That being said, the experience was really awesome. If I went back through the museum, its very likely that I would rent the iPad again.

Girl Talk during Pacific Rim

So I saw the new Guillermo del Toro film Pacific Rim tonight in iMax 3D. I don't see a lot of the big budget hollywood films that are released, but I do make an effort to catch what might be deemed the main wave of things. These are the Avatars and the Spidermen, enough to stay up with the most attractive stars and the latest styles of filmmaking.

Enter my experience of Pacific Rim. I am not familiar with del Toro's films outside of Pan's Labyrinth, which I fell asleep during many years ago (due to the time of night, not the quality of the film). My interest in this film was based primarily on my love of Neon Genesis Evangeleon, which was highly influential in this film's story and style. I can say that I share many of the influences that del Toro called upon in making this film. Certain scenes were very clearly influenced by existing films. Outside of the plot being a reworked, westernized telling of the Neon Genesis series, Blade Runner, Inception, Avatar, and Shadow of the Colossus were the main influences I saw in the film.

The film was a good, big budget hollywood film. Guillermo definitely has good taste, pulling from the appropriate sources when necessary. The film doesn't break new ground in any sense, but it was a well crafted, enjoyable experience. It makes me think a little bit about Girl Talk's mash up albums. When those are successful, each moment is calling upon a collective appreciation of the appropriate source material. This is analogous to del Toro's film making here, and the reason for the film's success.

Yelp vs. Trip Advisor (The Meal Edition)

HELP! I'm hungry... 

I just moved to San Francisco and have settled down in the Mission District. I've become reliant on Yelp to help me get situated in the area. I decided to see what else was out there, and downloaded the Trip Advisor iPad app. The showdown began tonight, as I tried to figure out where to eat.

User Interface: 

Both UI's have their idiosyncracies, but Trip Advisor's UI is littered with inconsistencies that absolutely wreck the user experience. The app designers tried to cram the too many browsing options into the left panel of the app, which overcrowds that side with different options. The app is a whos who of contemporary UI tricks, with a page out effect to show different map types, a side panel on the right for the filer, a zoom in and out button and pinch gestures to zoom... I'm overwhelmed! Additionally every time a user moves in the map in the Trip Advisor app, the map listings change letters, which confuses the absolute hell out of me when I'm using it. Their top navigation bar is very poorly laid out. 

(Trip Advisor's map view)

On the contrary, the Yelp app has me comfortable and situated. It brings the additional UI elements into a bottom bar that accompanies the map view in the app. The top navigation is nicely laid out, segregating between the left panel options and the map options. The filter is much easier to find and use in the Yelp app. And, the search feature is much more responsive in the Yelp app, allowing you to search by keyword where the TA app forces you to search for a specific location.

(Yelp's map view)

Plus, the Yelp app has kick ass features like a monocle and a picture grid for viewing search listings.

(Yelps Monocle... I don't imagine I'll ever use this, but its totes rad)

Information Layout

Trip Advisor

Tabs?!! Come on TA, are you serious? This is not the best way to present information to a user on an iPad. I will say I do appreciate the formatted menu option. While Pizzeria Delfina sounds enticing, you are just not getting me excited about heading there...

Yelp

This is more like it. Do I even need to elaborate? In case I do, scrolling through a nicely designed information view is much sexier than clicking tabbed info dumps. One gripe... A menu option is totally missing from the Yelp app. (Although I found it on the mobile app as I was walking to the restaurant). Cha-Ya here I come!

Small note on Visual Design: 

Anecdote... My father took me golfing when I was growing up. I haven't golfed since. Don't make me feel like I'm searching for golf courses when I'm trying to go out! It makes me unexcited about doing anything in this city. Red on the other hand makes me want to get up and go!

The winner... YELP! 

And animals everywhere rejoices as we enjoyed vegan num nums.