Inspiring museum interactives
- What do you think is the goal of the experience you chose?
The goal of the espionage timeline at the spy museum in Berlin is to outline all things spy by block colour and year. The different coloured blocks relate to cryptography, internal security, industrial espionage, foreign espionage, Spies in Legends, scouts, intrigue and military espionage. I believe the goal of this experience is to appeal to a wide array of people, as there is a vast array of information that it displays in a neat and well organised format that looks easy to use.
- What design challenges may the people involved in your chosen project have faced? How did they solve them?
There is a vast amount information ‘crammed’ into this timeline. The designers would have faced challenges finding a way to neatly organise it, in a way that visitors could easily understand and interact with. The timeline is multi touch, so I imagine they must have realised due to the size of it (there are multiple screens stretching along the timeline) that multiple people would be using it at once, the exhibit would be chaotic if it was unable to handle multiple people using it at once.
As there is so much information, you’re able to select a year and individually browse through that year if you want to, this may be useful if someone wants to check on spy activity say during the year they are born or a year that has some importance to them.
- Why did you pick this project? What intrigues you about it?
I’ve always found spies interesting and mysterious, it seems that this exhibit (and the museum in general) would be really intriguing to visit. Making a timeline of spy activity sounds like a very fun idea and from the pictures available of the exhibit it looks like they executed it very well.
- Where does this project fit in the content — experience graph (in your opinion) and why?
Looking at the content map above, I’d say this is a learning experience, it doesn’t require the user to produce anything, it just allows them to view and sort through information. As for the type of content it is, I’d argue you could say it was a mix of broad and focused. Broad because you’re able to see the espionage activity in a long timeline spanning many years, you’re also able to sort through specific activities based on the colour of the block you’re looking at. However, also focused as you’re able to browse through specific events individually and see images/artefacts from the collection that relate to those events.
