How to create an experience thus attracting the general public who are not interested in Asian art？
Museums want to educate the public about art, but some elements of exotic Asian cultures would be overlooked
Eastern cultures are often tainted with mystery, such as those ancient but non-existent beasts, the gestures you make for meditation when doing yoga, the quiet and serene Buddha statues all have a deeper cultural connotation. Some elements of exotic cultures are interesting in different cultural contexts, and many of them would be overlooked if they were not visually visualized.
So I took the opportunity to work with the Smithsonian Open Access Department to create a series of data vis works that visualize interesting parts of Asian art.Different from the curator telling the story, I tell the story through the data, let the data tell the story by itself. This is a way for more people to understand art, thus helping non-profit organizations like Smithsonian to educate the public about art.
Introducing National Museum of Asian Art
Impact: been featured on the official websites of Smithsonian and Parsons.
When was the last time you visited Smithsonian? Have you visited the national museum of Asian Art?
As a branch of the Smithsonian, compared to big brothers such as natural history or air and space museum, it struggled to have more visitors mainly due to limited information about their visitors' interests and the complicated and nuanced nature of art collections.
Out of Smithsonian's mission: the increase and diffusion of knowledge, in February 2020, Smithsonian Open Access launched its more than 3 million items online from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums including the National Museum of Asian Art.
The new database publishes a lot of content, but in the case of the population is not familiar with the context. Instead, it is easy to lose direction. By exploring data in both quantitative and qualitative ways, This results in three separate but interconnected interactive data visualizations.
Questions Answered:
- How many pieces of art have animals on them?
- What kind of animals are they?
- What is the relationship between the animals? What cultural connotations do they bring to the table?
→ View it online
Inspired by ancient Buddhist scripture scrolls, the mudras (gestures) art pieces are gathered together and synthesized for presentation.
Questions Answered:
- What is mudra?
- How often do these mudras appear in the national museum of Asian art? Which is the most common?
- What are the meanings of the different mudras?
Inspired by ancient Buddhist scripture scrolls, the mudras (gestures) art pieces are gathered together and synthesized for presentation.
Questions Answered:
- What is mudra?
- How often do these mudras appear in the national museum of Asian art? Which is the most common?
- What are the meanings of the different mudras?
Integrating the Smithsonian's purpose of spreading art, the data vis project is aimed at the general public, So I conducted desktop research and interview to collected their thoughts.
Through the open access database, national museum of asian art has 5,642 artwork records, Here are what it provides：
Artworks data are very difficult to quantify in a uniform standard. For example, bronze, bronze with inlay, bronze with glaze are different categories.
Also the amount of information presented by the data is relatively limited, not all of them have detailed descriptions of its cultural value.
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How to create an experience thus attracting the general public who are not interested in Asian art？
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How might I create an experience thus systematically presenting Asian art ？
With these two questions in mind, I started from the database topics, selected interesting topics close to life, and integrated the topics to find the connection between them.
Systematic connections
At the macro level, The design should look for systematic connections within the data points. allow the users to engage with the collections in a deeper way.
Present the truth
At the micro-level, the design should as a matter of fact display data in a straightforward way
Attractive
If having， the design should include elements of discovery to attract users
Educational
The design should amplify the educational nature of the museum
Then I mapped out possible options I had frequent working sessions from the client and the cohort to absorb and evaluate their feedback. By wire-framing the design multiple times, There are updates everywhere including layout, visualizations, and visual presentations respectively.
How might I create an experience that could appeal to the masses?
How might I create an experience thus systematically presenting Asian art ？
Deal with limitations
In the design process, many features or designs need to be adjusted according to the actual situation, this time to learn to communicate with different teams, to clarify the reasons for the problem, whether there is a reason and plan b to validate design. In what case I need to take on design, over all this is design rather than decoration.
Communicate early, often and clearly
Exchanging thoughts with stakeholders mentioned above early and often allowed me to see the limitations faster and adjust my design in time. For example, in the build of learning more, the dev has been struggling for a long time because of the previous version of the design, and later we iterated the design to make the data architecture clearer, if we communicate early, we can reach that sweet point sooner
Achieve impact by building trust
Being a new member in the team, it’s important to show that I care about the team. So when I tried to use some novel methods and asked for resources. For example, I use maze for the usability test combined card sorting in between, I would explain why and keep the supporters updated with progress I made to enhance participation feeling.
