Sitting here at UX Week. This morning featured a really inspiring presentation from Jake Barton, of Local Projects. They’ve done work on StoryCorps and the National September 11 Memorial Museum and other really amazing interactive public installations.
I am officially inspired.
Jake showed how physical space design and interactivity can be merged to create not just a tangible feeling for the person in the space, but really among people in and through and as a byproduct of that space. It’s like exhibit design for the big wide world.
I’ve never felt terribly intrigued by museum/exhibit design because it seems sort of irrelevant when you think about the masses who never set foot inside a museum (and also probably because I was secretly insecure about being so uncultured and ignorant compared to all those lovely art history girls at Barnard). But this seems like a way to bring all the richness of of that experience out into the world and share it with everybody.
This physical + interactive thing seems to combine my lifelong fasctination with the design of physical spaces and the interaction design that has come to figure so prominently in my adult life. Wow! Wow! I’m so excited. Ok, calm down, Leah.