The Tech Museum of Innovation is a world-class interactive museum in San Jose, CA. I joined their team in 2003 to develop a big new permanent gallery called NetPl@net.
I wrote and pitched the initial concept for the gallery, defining the goals and main messages. I then wrote detailed specs that described the functionality and content of every exhibit component.
I worked with external video and multimedia producers to produce all of the digital content that I had designed for the gallery.
I also wrote all final exhibit text, from the labels to the multimedia components.
To create the Webcam Globe, we hooked up touch sensors to a huge globe, and then connected them to a large screen to display a live webcam feed from that area of the world.
We created a Trend Tracker station, where visitors could dial in a month and year to see the highest trending search engine topics from that time. They could also play a guessing game, trying to deduce the correct month and year of a given set of trending data.
I coordinated with the New York Hall of Science to set up an Internet Arm Wrestling station, where visitors could wrestle each other from across the country via a mechanical arm and haptic technology. I designed a touchscreen program that led visitors step-by-step to connect with an opponent, and to learn about the technology behind it.
At the Webpage Studio, visitors could create a customized webpage of their museum visit, complete with certain photos, data, and images that they collected from different exhibits.
I designed the Crazy Connections exhibit to show how any input and any output can be connected via the Internet, no matter how far apart. Visitors connected percussion instruments to inputs like the door sensor on the front door of the museum. A webcam feed let them see that every time someone opened the door, the drum at the exhibit would play.
In the Interconnected City exhibit, visitors rolled a display screen around a panoramic cityscape to discover a variety of Internet-enabled devices throughout the scene. Short animated vignettes would pop up, bringing the scene to life, showing characters whose everyday lives were impacted by these technologies.
I worked with Linden Labs to develop a Virtual World exhibit, where visitors could create their own avatar and then explore and build together in an open-ended landscape.
We repurposed an old arcade whack-a-mole unit to create Whack-a-Spam, where visitors tried to keep spam out of their inbox by whacking it with a mallet!
It was a privilege to work with such a brilliant team of engineers, fabricators, designers, graphic artists, and more. And to partner with tech companies like Yahoo! and Hewlett Packard, who contributed their ideas and resources to the gallery. I loved my time at The Tech.