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Post date: Jun 12, 2011 5:09:31 AM
This Saturday, I was fortunate to have been invited to a day-long workshop held at the Exploratorium's New Media Studio. In preparation for the move to their new location above the San Francisco Bay, they convened a group designers with varied expertise to help them prototype new interactive exhibits. The goal was to design meaningful visitor experiences with visualizations of near real-time data from the Global Tagging of Pelagic Predators project (GTOPP).
Although there were many ways to query the data sets and many patterns to be discovered, my partners Jennifer Wang, Michael Ang, and I decided to focus on conveying a single message: That is, the sheer magnitude of speed and distance across the globe covered by these animals. We also wanted visitors to relate to the animals' experiences at a kinaesthetic level.
So in our prototype, visitors engage in a steeple chase against a leatherback turtle, a white shark, a bluefin tuna, and a laysan albatross. They pedal at a stationary bicycle that registers their speed, and at the end of the race, they see displayed on a map the proportion of the routes of the other species they would have covered at the speed they biked (hint: They'll never stand a chance against the speedy bluefin tuna!). Certainly not a perfect design, but definitely a fun start!
Get This Widget!TOPP.org
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