Second Story: Creative InspirationsIntroduction| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:10 | Julie Beeler: We're storytellers, but I
don't really feel, in that traditional sense, that
| | 00:15 | I'm really a storyteller.
| | 00:17 | Brad Johnson: Sometimes we're creating
pieces in a museum where you have to accommodate
| | 00:22 | both school buses, loads of kids that
have very limited attention spans, to people
| | 00:27 | that are experts in the subject matter.
| | 00:29 | So we have to come up with a scheme
that will accommodate that broad range
| | 00:35 | of potential visitors.
| | 00:37 | Heather Daniels: We have these tags that used
to say the evolution, the co-evolution of canines
| | 00:42 | in North America.
| | 00:43 | We found that to be really academic and
that people were not at all interested,
| | 00:49 | but suddenly if we put the
dog flag up there, 'Oh Dogs!
| | 00:54 | I want to learn about dogs.
| | 00:55 | Okay, let's click it.'
| | 00:57 | Shoam Thomas: I possibly want to lure
them in and almost have them flow into this
| | 01:01 | back staging area, where we feel like
that could be like a collaboration, a
| | 01:07 | contribution-type area.
| | 01:09 | Matt Arnold: You can have a lot of kids
walk up to this, and it has to be able to react
| | 01:13 | to all of them.
| | 01:14 | You can't have three or four of them touching it,
| | 01:17 | and it's working for them, and a
fifth one walks up, and he is like, "Oh?"
| | 01:22 | Brad: All of these people coming together,
| | 01:23 | every project is a different mix of
the different people that are here.
| | 01:27 | Julie: That's essentially what you do
every day with interactive media is take all
| | 01:32 | the varying components and put them together.
| | 01:35 | (Music playing.)
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| Workspace| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Brad Johnson: Greetings! Welcome to
Second Story. We're here in North Portland.
| | 00:12 | This is our building, our studio.
| | 00:15 | We have the whole second half of this
building that we bought three and a half years ago
| | 00:18 | with Grand Central Baking.
| | 00:21 | So come on in.
| | 00:24 | Portland is one of the most bike-
friendly cities in the United States, and commuting
| | 00:28 | to work is a big part of the
culture here at Second Story.
| | 00:31 | Especially when the studio is right
above a bakery, it's a good idea to get in
| | 00:35 | the habit of riding your bike every day to work.
| | 00:38 | So I do that myself.
| | 00:40 | Things that we're working on right now
in production is the Koshland Climate
| | 00:44 | Science Table, which is all about how to
make decisions and affect the climate,
| | 00:50 | looking at the Arctic Studies Center,
which is - I'm going to go to Anchorage on
| | 00:53 | Friday and open that up next week.
Lots of new things in the pipeline that
| | 00:57 | we're all working on.
| | 01:01 | All over Europe, before museums, they
would have these curiosity cabinets for
| | 01:05 | people to display things that were of
note from all around the world and they
| | 01:08 | would always have a big
crocodile on the ceiling.
| | 01:12 | That really inspired the architecture
of this space, because a lot of what you
| | 01:16 | do in collections-based media is
organize and sort information, and present it
| | 01:23 | in different ways, so that kind of
became a motif for how the whole design of
| | 01:27 | the space worked.
| | 01:30 | This is really the heart of the
studio, where more of the design that's
| | 01:35 | onscreen happens.
| | 01:36 | The other half of the studio is more
about prototyping and actually setting
| | 01:40 | things up in the physical environment
for the more on-site installation work
| | 01:44 | that we're doing.
| | 01:45 | The kind of work that we used to do
originally was all web site-specific and
| | 01:49 | then slowly it becomes outside of the
web, it becomes a kiosk, and then a kiosk
| | 01:54 | starts to turn into bigger tables,
and more and more environmental.
| | 01:57 | So we needed a place to really do some
prototyping, some testing, and we needed
| | 02:01 | to actually bring the hardware that
we're going to use in the museum here on-site
| | 02:06 | to test and to start to design it.
| | 02:09 | So when we come in here, this is the
place where we can actually project and
| | 02:14 | create things to scale while
we're in the design process.
| | 02:18 | We're working on this project
for the University of Oregon.
| | 02:20 | There's 14' columns that go
from the floor to the ceiling.
| | 02:24 | We need to actually create
those here to really test the scale and the
| | 02:29 | motion and how people are
going to interact with that.
| | 02:32 | So this is upstairs in the mezzanine.
| | 02:34 | We've got a big conference area,
and we did - for years we worked with
| | 02:38 | DreamWorks Records, and they always
inspired us because all of their conference
| | 02:41 | rooms were couches and big screens.
| | 02:44 | It was a really conducive way to
collaborate in a relaxed environment.
| | 02:48 | It's been a part of the way we've
had our studios organized ever since.
| | 02:52 | Once of things that we also have
here are a big collection of these
| | 02:57 | classroom charts and posters.
| | 02:58 | It's something I started to
collect about seven years ago.
| | 03:01 | I have about fifty of them.
| | 03:04 | What I love about them is it's a
perfect fusion of art and science.
| | 03:09 | This is one of the very best.
| | 03:11 | These are original lithographs from,
they came from the teens in France.
| | 03:16 | The detail on looking at some of the
hairs on the fly and the way they did
| | 03:21 | transparency is really a beautiful
example of the highest that this kind of craft
| | 03:26 | and art ever got to.
| | 03:29 | The subject matter is what I really love,
the diversity of finding things like
| | 03:33 | this, where you're looking at parts of
an apple, or how Esso moves oil through
| | 03:39 | Germany, and how transportation
works, a vulture, a bear, bats.
| | 03:46 | It's just a wonderful way to look at
the art and look at the world through this
| | 03:49 | kind of science and art kind of perspective.
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| Approaching interactive media| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Bruce Wyman: The reality is that museums
are competing with the rest of world for
| | 00:11 | people's finite attention, right?
| | 00:12 | You can choose to go to see a movie
at the end of the day, or you can go see
| | 00:16 | this exhibit at some museum.
| | 00:17 | So museums have to work a little bit to
try and make those experiences magical,
| | 00:21 | engaging, attractive, and a compelling
counterpart to those things. That just
| | 00:26 | appealing the people's nature of being
inspired by a museum isn't as strong as it
| | 00:31 | used to be, and so you've seen a
trend towards thinking of a much broader
| | 00:34 | experience, and what that
can be, and what that can entail.
| | 00:40 | Brad Johnson: One of the main reasons a lot
of clients hire us is to create a kind of an
| | 00:46 | experience that their viewership, or
their audience, or their visitors, the people
| | 00:51 | that come to their web sites, have a
memorable personal connection with the
| | 00:56 | content that they're serving, to
address different learning styles, to address
| | 01:00 | different attention levels, to
address different interest levels.
| | 01:04 | Sometimes we're creating pieces in a
museum where you have to accommodate
| | 01:09 | both kids that have very limited
attention spans to people that are experts
| | 01:13 | in the subject matter.
| | 01:14 | So we have to come up with a scheme
that will accommodate that broad range
| | 01:20 | of potential visitors.
| | 01:22 | I think that's one of the most
exciting things about it, that it's not just
| | 01:25 | one presentation, but it's lots of
different potential presentations based
| | 01:30 | on unique interests.
| | 01:31 | David Waingarten: I think if it were just
technical expertise, I don't know that we would be
| | 01:36 | able to have the same type of emotional
connection, you know, something that's
| | 01:40 | emotional that catches you and that
makes you interested in the content that
| | 01:44 | we're working with, and also has this
beautiful, elegant, technical aspect that
| | 01:49 | hopefully, if we do it right, is transparent.
| | 01:51 | You're not sitting there thinking, "Wow!
| | 01:52 | This is really technically amazing!"
| | 01:54 | That should all be completely transparent.
| | 01:57 | You should be just interacting with
the stuff that we're creating in a
| | 02:00 | level that's visceral.
| | 02:03 | Julie Beeler: We're storytellers, but I
don't really feel, in that traditional sense, that
| | 02:08 | I'm really a storyteller.
| | 02:09 | What I think of is that I take
those stories and that information and I
| | 02:13 | put them together in meaningful ways.
| | 02:16 | The visitors can then interact with
those stories and those components to weave
| | 02:20 | together their own story, and that's
really, to us, what interactivity is all about
| | 02:25 | is that the visitor is creating a second story.
That's what we love doing, and that's what we
| | 02:31 | hope we continue to have opportunities
to do, and we've had the luxury of having
| | 02:35 | some pretty amazing stories to work with, so...
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| Starting Second Story | 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Julie Beeler: I met Brad in Berkeley, California.
| | 00:10 | I had moved there after going to
school at University of the Pacific, and was
| | 00:14 | working for a graphic design studio,
and became really excited with what was
| | 00:18 | going on with multimedia in the Bay Area.
| | 00:21 | I thought, "That's something I could do."
| | 00:23 | So I decided to kind of teach myself that.
| | 00:26 | I looked for a job that would allow me
the opportunity to learn a little bit
| | 00:31 | more, because of course I didn't
have any skills in multimedia.
| | 00:34 | I had an opportunity to work with The
Burdick Group, which was a firm in San
| | 00:39 | Francisco, and they were working
on The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
| | 00:42 | And they were putting in some of the
very early interactives that you see in
| | 00:46 | museums and cultural institutions today.
| | 00:48 | Brad Johnson: Up until that point, I was
living in Berkeley and was a painter and
| | 00:54 | supporting myself doing construction
and carpentry and things like that.
| | 00:58 | It was a height of the CD-ROM craze,
where Voyager titles were all over the
| | 01:03 | place, and you could go to the
bookstores and get CD-ROMs of really compelling
| | 01:07 | things related to travel or
entertainment, educational titles;
| | 01:13 | everything was coming out right then,
| | 01:14 | especially in the Bay Area; it
was a really popular movement.
| | 01:18 | I just was completely enamored with that.
| | 01:21 | I got my first computer then and
thought, "I need to be part of this.
| | 01:26 | I need to learn how to
create those kind of experiences."
| | 01:30 | So I went to San Francisco State and
took some 3D classes and an interactive
| | 01:36 | storytelling class and started to
put together this presentation about
| | 01:39 | clothespins, as kind of just a test case.
| | 01:43 | And it won lots of awards, and then, all of
sudden, people started calling me to do
| | 01:50 | more sort of floppy disk and
CD-ROM-like promotional pieces.
| | 01:55 | At this time, I was by myself, and I
had some friends that were also kind of
| | 01:59 | doing this business.
| | 02:00 | I got called by GE Capital to
create something that was a lot bigger than
| | 02:06 | just one guy could do, got this
other company involved, and they had just
| | 02:10 | recently hired Julie.
| | 02:12 | Julie: I found a great firm in
Berkeley called Smetts Stafford Media.
| | 02:17 | They said, "Our first project that we're
going to do is with our friend Brad.
| | 02:21 | We're going to go over to his office,"
and that's how I met Brad, and things
| | 02:25 | started to take off from there.
| | 02:27 | Brad Johnson: Then that relationship
became both romantic and professional.
| | 02:32 | As I got more and more work coming in
for my company with National Geographic
| | 02:38 | and PBS and Discovery, I needed more
help, and we started to work together and
| | 02:44 | ultimately then grew the company,
changed the name from Brad Johnson Presents
| | 02:48 | to Second Story.
| | 02:49 | Julie: From there, we just started
moving into these environments where museums were
| | 02:55 | a little late in adopting technology.
| | 02:58 | We were right there at the forefront,
and were able to be the go-to team that
| | 03:03 | could put together innovative,
interactive experiences and balance that with a
| | 03:07 | lot of content and organization, so...
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| Working as a team| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Male Speaker 1: The studio, I think, takes a
lot of pride in getting the most they can out
| | 00:13 | of every employee.
| | 00:15 | Female Speaker: I've never worked on projects
like this where, from start to finish, everyone
| | 00:18 | is involved in every aspect of
the project, which is awesome.
| | 00:21 | Male Speaker 2: I think overall people are
just always trying to foster the growth of ideas.
| | 00:28 | Male Speaker 3: It's really rewarding seeing
your ideas and your creative thoughts being
| | 00:34 | realized in something that you get
to share with a lot of other people.
| | 00:37 | David Waingarten: The people I want to work
for are people who care about what they do.
| | 00:42 | When they have passion and they want to
be here, I want to be here, and it's not
| | 00:45 | just Brad and Julie.
| | 00:46 | I mean, most of the people here, that I get
to interact with day to day, really care
| | 00:51 | about doing a good job.
| | 00:52 | (inaudible speech)
| | 00:56 | Brad Johnson: I started
the company in 1994. It was a one-man deal.
| | 00:59 | It was called Brad Johnson presents.
| | 01:01 | There is like this triad that kind of
evolved where there was design, project
| | 01:07 | management producing content, and then
the third part being the technology side.
| | 01:12 | That kind of triad, I think,
really informed the way that the whole
| | 01:15 | organization grew.
| | 01:17 | Now that we are thirty people, we still
have that sort of breakdown where there's
| | 01:22 | three different departments.
| | 01:24 | But yet outside of that, there are a
lot of people that are kind of in-between
| | 01:28 | and can do a little of this and little of that.
| | 01:32 | To me, one of the most rewarding things
is really the collaboration that happens
| | 01:36 | here. And all the different types of
minds that come together to make it possible
| | 01:41 | here to do what we do has
been the most rewarding part.
| | 01:44 | We've got lots of people that
have that liberal arts background.
| | 01:47 | We've got people that are
brilliant programmers in both front end
| | 01:51 | visualization to back end database
systems that make the kinds of ongoing web
| | 01:57 | projects that we do possible,
| | 02:00 | incredible content researchers and
storytellers that do wonderful job of
| | 02:05 | figuring out what are the assets
that are going to bring a story to life.
| | 02:10 | We've got artists and designers with
illustration backgrounds, physical design
| | 02:15 | backgrounds, motion backgrounds,
and information design backgrounds.
| | 02:19 | All these people coming together,
every project is a different mix of the
| | 02:23 | different people that are here.
| | 02:25 | That's really wonderful to be part of a
family, really, that's keeps evolving in
| | 02:32 | new ways to create new kinds of experiences.
| | 02:35 | Julie Beeler: There's lots of people in
the studio where they might have applied for a
| | 02:39 | very specific position.
| | 02:41 | It's like, "Oh! you'd be so much better doing
this. Let's carve this position out and start to
| | 02:45 | create that and see where it takes us."
| | 02:47 | Those are the things that we get
excited about, and so we always encourage all
| | 02:52 | different types of people, because at the
end of the day we are all just a bunch
| | 02:56 | of liberal artists with very
diverse experiences and interests.
| | 03:00 | You know, for me, I am a quilter, and
so a big part of it is all the different
| | 03:05 | pieces and components, and how do you
put that quote together so that ultimately
| | 03:09 | you are creating this amazing,
beautiful experience for people, and that's
| | 03:14 | essentially what you do
every day within interactive media is
| | 03:16 | take all the varying components and
put them together, so it's a lot of fun.
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| Playing with technology| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Matt Arnold: So, we are in
the media lab at Second Story.
| | 00:11 | This is kind of an area of the company
where we experiment with new technologies,
| | 00:17 | and what we are looking at
today is a mini golf experience.
| | 00:21 | I would say we kind of
volunteered to do this as part of a local
| | 00:27 | mini golf tournament.
| | 00:28 | There were at least dozen different
mini golf holes that a lot of local
| | 00:33 | companies contributed, and ours
was the only fully digital one.
| | 00:37 | Thomas Wester: We used it as an R & D effort.
| | 00:40 | Typically, we start up with the user
experience. We say, "This is what it's going to
| | 00:44 | be. Now, go and build it."
| | 00:46 | In this case, it was more like we
have an opportunity to really put any
| | 00:49 | technology or hell, a stack of
technologies in there just to see what it's
| | 00:52 | like from a technical perspective.
| | 00:55 | Matt: So, the first thing you do is
use the Wiimote to select a course that you
| | 00:59 | are interested in.
| | 01:00 | Let's try the bug course.
| | 01:02 | It invites you to put the fiducials
down on the table, and they offer these
| | 01:08 | barriers to your destination - obstacles.
| | 01:13 | This is a special one that allows you
to steer the position of your swing, and
| | 01:19 | then you just swing away. And we are
using all the sensors inside the Wiimote to
| | 01:22 | actually do the hitting of the ball.
| | 01:24 | Thomas: We were interested in how
people interact with a physical object like this,
| | 01:29 | and what it is like, and how
people understand to work with it.
| | 01:33 | So, we built an application.
Basically, it shows you what's going on.
| | 01:36 | So, I am holding this one down, the B
button, and it's giving me all the data
| | 01:42 | of where the Wii thinks
it's in space right now.
| | 01:45 | So, what I do is when I hit the button,
I start recording it, and then I swing and let go.
| | 01:49 | So, a big swing will give me a lot of
force, and then I tell the program, somebody
| | 01:53 | hit with force, versus like a small
swing will only give me little force.
| | 01:57 | This is using an Open Source
library that does fluid dynamics.
| | 02:01 | The reason why we are running this is
just to see what the performance is like.
| | 02:04 | Matt: You want to make sure that it's
not just a one-person experience, that you can
| | 02:08 | have a lot of kids walk up to this, and
it has to be able to react to all of them.
| | 02:12 | You can't have three or four of them
touching it, and it's working for them, and
| | 02:16 | a fifth one walks up is like "Oh..."
| | 02:20 | So, we want to make sure that
whatever technology that we deploy
| | 02:25 | invites everyone.
| | 02:26 | There is plenty of opportunity for
everybody to interact with the hardware.
| | 02:31 | Underneath the table is this camera,
which not only is looking at for the
| | 02:36 | fiducials but can also be
looking at finger touches.
| | 02:41 | The raw feed is this square here, and
what the computer processes is over here.
| | 02:47 | What comes out is this wonderful ID on
each finger point and information about
| | 02:52 | what they are doing:
| | 02:53 | are they moving, are they touching,
are they are removing, and how many are there?
| | 02:58 | You should be able to approach a
table surface like this, and it should
| | 03:02 | react to you right away;
otherwise, we've learned
| | 03:05 | Matt: from past projects that if you
Thomas: They walk away.
| | 03:07 | don't get something right away, people
walk away and they miss out on all this
| | 03:10 | work that we put into the software.
| | 03:13 | There is a lot of dynamics there.
| | 03:15 | There is - I don't know - a
curiosity, and then there is almost like an
| | 03:19 | embarrassment, or a shame, like "Oh!
| | 03:20 | Matt: "I can't. I don't know."
Thomas: "I don't want to touch it."
| | 03:22 | Matt: Or people are..
Thomas: "It might break."
| | 03:24 | Matt: Yeah. They are very cautious around
the technology, and we want to invite them to
| | 03:31 | touch, and we want to make sure it does
something wonderful when they do that.
| | 03:35 | Then they'll do more.
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| Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County: Storytelling| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:13 | Julie Beeler: Second Story had the
opportunity, the Natural History Museum in L.A. was
| | 00:17 | building their Age of Mammals Hall.
| | 00:20 | We spent a tremendous amount of time with
the content and understanding, what are
| | 00:25 | the types of stories that we are telling?
| | 00:27 | It's a very complex story, that's a very
intellectual story, and how do we break
| | 00:34 | that story down to an average level, so
that an individual could actually wrap
| | 00:39 | their head around the concept that
continents move, climates change, and
| | 00:43 | mammals evolve.
| | 00:46 | Heather Daniel: It's been a long process,
and it's great to see it start from really
| | 00:51 | conceptual thinking all the way.
| | 00:53 | Now, we have the concrete
interactives, and we are seeing it in place.
| | 00:56 | Male Speaker: Okay. It's set to ninety-nine now.
Heather: Okay. Let's try this.
| | 01:00 | I think what's interesting is that
every project is different, and that we come
| | 01:05 | up with different ways to try to get to
whatever that core concept is going to
| | 01:09 | be, and how we are going to present that.
| | 01:11 | Jennifer Guibord: We take a really comprehensive
look, and we say, what is the goal, where are
| | 01:17 | we trying to get to with this, and
what's the best way to tell the story.
| | 01:22 | So, our team came together and met
with the museum team, the exhibit team,
| | 01:28 | and all the different parties that
are involved, and tried to learn a little
| | 01:32 | bit about the hall, what their
mission was, how are they going about their
| | 01:36 | storytelling, what voices are they
using, and from that we put together a
| | 01:41 | concept package.
| | 01:47 | When we bring a team together, we
try to make it as multidisciplinary as
| | 01:50 | possible, because if you have all the
different perspectives from the very
| | 01:54 | beginning, and represented throughout
your process, then you know you have the
| | 01:59 | most holistic approach.
| | 02:00 | So, the first part of our process
really is this content acquisition and
| | 02:06 | understanding of all the different -
the databases, the stories, all the minutiae that
| | 02:13 | are going into the presentation.
| | 02:15 | Then you are going to be brainstorming
on how do you make those stories come to
| | 02:19 | life in an interactive?
| | 02:21 | That's really what we are trying to
do during the brainstorming in the
| | 02:25 | conceptual phase, is finding something
in the story that creates our concept.
| | 02:31 | So, you are sitting down, you are
brainstorming, you are looking at images,
| | 02:36 | pictures of the hall, story,
and all that sort of stuff,
| | 02:40 | whatever it is it's going to inspire
the team so that they have that aha
| | 02:43 | moment of "Oh! I understand what they are
going for, and I think we can get there by
| | 02:47 | doing this.
| | 02:49 | We've got a concept and here is how
the content fills into it, and here is how
| | 02:53 | the technology fits that content."
| | 02:55 | So, you want to make sure that you
have the total package, and you are not
| | 02:59 | just thinking of the content or the
design or the technology, but you need
| | 03:04 | something that pulls it all together, and
that is the concept that the studio is
| | 03:08 | trying to come up with.
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| Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County: Prototyping| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Heather Daniel: One of the unique things about
the studio is that the designers are also the
| | 00:13 | user interface designers, the architects;
| | 00:16 | they're really thinking
through the entire experience.
| | 00:18 | So that's something that's very special,
and I think a special talent set
| | 00:22 | that we have with our designers.
| | 00:25 | Jennifer Guibord: So they're thinking about
an experience, in addition to visual design.
| | 00:29 | What we do is we put
together packages similar to this.
| | 00:32 | This is our wireframing package for one
of our presentations, the Exhibit Kiosks
| | 00:38 | that is going into L.A.
| | 00:40 | Heather Daniel: What I really like about
the wireframes is it forces us as designers,
| | 00:44 | developers, producers,
| | 00:45 | the whole team, to really
think through the user experience.
| | 00:48 | Devoid of design, this is just really concrete:
| | 00:52 | how is the user going to use the interactive?
| | 00:54 | I think this is a great moment for
us to really ask the hard questions.
| | 00:58 | Jennifer: Each one of these allows
us to illustrate to the client that there is
| | 01:02 | multiple functions in this kiosk.
| | 01:04 | So when you're on this screen, the
visitor is standing in front of a kiosk where
| | 01:08 | they can zoom a timeline, and
they can explore geologic time.
| | 01:11 | As they explore geologic time, the
map changes, the continents move, and
| | 01:16 | different stories come to life.
| | 01:18 | So as these wireframes are coming
together, we're working on prototypes.
| | 01:23 | Heather: Seeing the transition from
wireframes to prototype is we get a lot of those
| | 01:29 | answers of like, "This isn't
working well," or "This is not a good user
| | 01:33 | experience," or "This isn't intuitive."
| | 01:35 | Jennifer: Both internal and client
team can go, "This is great, but I totally didn't
| | 01:40 | see how I was supposed to get back to that map.
| | 01:43 | It got lost on me." Then we know we
have a challenge going into design that we
| | 01:48 | need to make everything that's
advertised on this screen clear to the visitor,
| | 01:53 | because people are missing the fact that I
can do this, or missing the fact that I
| | 01:56 | can go back to that.
| | 01:57 | Heather: That's a lot cheaper.
| | 01:59 | It's a lot easier to find those
mistakes in the prototype than it is to get all
| | 02:03 | the way into beta and realize, you know what?
| | 02:05 | I can't get back to looking at the
map, or I can't see the species that I want to.
| | 02:11 | So, the prototype is a
really great moment for us.
| | 02:14 | It can be a hard moment for us when
we realize that what we've been working
| | 02:18 | on for a couple of months, and feel
pretty strongly about, is not really the
| | 02:22 | right solution.
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| Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County: Design| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Jennifer Guibord: In the studio, while
we're working on the user experience and the
| | 00:13 | functional side of things, the design
team is also putting together what we
| | 00:17 | call our visual explorations.
| | 00:20 | What we do is we look for inspiration,
| | 00:22 | we look at the exhibit color palette,
the graphics that are going in, the
| | 00:26 | style of those, and from that, we put
together a package of visual treatments.
| | 00:32 | These are presented
completely devoid of any function.
| | 00:37 | What it is is it's an attempt to
pull from internal and external teams
| | 00:41 | what they like and don't like
from a visual point of view.
| | 00:44 | So if the director of the museum really
hates green, we want to learn this now.
| | 00:49 | We don't want to learn it once we've
made a green background that's beautifully
| | 00:53 | integrated into design comps.
| | 00:55 | So by presenting just the visual
treatments without the function, that's the
| | 01:00 | sort of feedback that we get.
| | 01:03 | Heather Daniel: At some point we say, "Great!
| | 01:04 | We got sign off, we're all agreed on
the design direction, we're signed off on
| | 01:10 | the wireframes, we know what the user
experience is going to be, and now you're
| | 01:14 | not going to hear from us for a while."
| | 01:15 | Now we're going to go make it.
| | 01:17 | That's where we gather all
the resources, our team members.
| | 01:22 | Then it's a lot of scheduling.
| | 01:24 | It's a lot of build plans.
| | 01:25 | So that becomes like a very
productive part for us internally, but the
| | 01:30 | clients don't really see.
| | 01:31 | There is a kind of a quiet time, and
the clients aren't seeing as much until
| | 01:37 | the beta.
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| Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County: Usability testing| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Heather Daniel: So usability testing
is a great place for us to check in.
| | 00:13 | We've been working kind of in a siloed
environment, working with the clients,
| | 00:18 | working with our team, and we can
get kind of a tunnel vision of what we
| | 00:21 | think we need to do.
| | 00:23 | Usability testing is a great reality
check, because it allows us to put it in
| | 00:29 | front of a real audience and say, what
works, what doesn't, what do you like,
| | 00:34 | what don't you like?
| | 00:36 | So we had the wide variety of people
who had no background in natural history,
| | 00:42 | to those who are very
interested, and that's their profession.
| | 00:46 | Some of the feedback we got
was, it was all over the place.
| | 00:50 | They loved learning about specific species.
| | 00:54 | They loved going and learning
about what specimens are on display.
| | 01:00 | They were really reading it.
| | 01:01 | They're like, "Oh, a two-horned
Rhinoceros. What's that?"
| | 01:05 | Then on the world map, they would just
loved scrolling back and forth, and the
| | 01:10 | interactive nature of
this really was compelling.
| | 01:14 | They felt really drawn in right away.
| | 01:16 | Even if they just spent a couple of
minutes, just going back and forth, and
| | 01:21 | learning how the continents
shifted and the climates changed,
| | 01:23 | hey, that was enough.
| | 01:25 | If you were the paleobiologist who
spent a half an hour reading every single
| | 01:31 | little story, and looking at every
single little detail, you can be here for thirty
| | 01:36 | seconds, and you can get something, or
you can be here for ten minutes, and you
| | 01:40 | can still be engaged.
| | 01:41 | Jennifer Guibord: That's
really the strong suit of the beta.
| | 01:45 | When you get to a point where it's
complete enough that all of the features
| | 01:48 | are in, it looks close enough to the
finished product, that the feedback that
| | 01:53 | you get is valid.
| | 01:55 | If you put it out there too soon, then
you're going to be sitting there with
| | 01:57 | the user experiencing,
| | 01:58 | "Well, it's not actually going to do that.
It's not really going to look like that."
| | 02:02 | You don't want that, because you want
the visitor to feel like they're actually
| | 02:05 | engaged with what's going into the museum.
| | 02:08 | But you also want to be able to take
it back to your team, and have enough
| | 02:12 | time, and have enough energy left on
the project that you can make the changes
| | 02:17 | that go from a good experience to
get it to the great experience that the
| | 02:21 | museum really wants.
| | 02:26 | Heather: We have these tags that
used to say the evolution, the co-evolution of
| | 02:32 | canines in North America.
| | 02:34 | We found that to be really academic, and
| | 02:37 | that people were not at all interested
in learning about the co-evolution of
| | 02:42 | canines in North America.
| | 02:43 | But suddenly if we put the dog flag
up there, "Oh, dogs. I want to learn about dogs.
| | 02:49 | Okay, let's click it."
Or camels and arid animal - mammals.
| | 02:55 | It was like these were things that
weren't connecting to the audience.
| | 03:00 | So we found that if we just shortened
up these titles, all of a sudden they
| | 03:03 | became engaging and exciting.
| | 03:06 | On the flip side, what we can see that
comes out in testing is the things that
| | 03:10 | what we're really concerned about that
like, is this too tough of a concept for
| | 03:14 | visitors, is this something
that we're concerned about?
| | 03:17 | This has come across in
| | 03:19 | one of our more complex exhibit
kiosks with the phylogenetic tree, which
| | 03:22 | is this like very complicated visual.
| | 03:26 | That's actually, that's been the most
successful component of the entire project.
| | 03:30 | I mean, across the board, people love it.
| | 03:33 | They have just spent so
much time playing with it.
| | 03:36 | So that's a great thing to have in your
back pocket going to a beta review and
| | 03:40 | saying, "Yeah, you may have
some concerns about this,
| | 03:43 | but people love this, like we need to keep this."
| | 03:46 | So it can also be a great tool to
inform clients, because they've also been
| | 03:51 | working in the silo, and they may have
specific ideas of what's not working and
| | 03:55 | what's working, and to have
that ability to say, "You know, no.
| | 03:59 | This is what I know is
working" is really powerful.
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| Sketching ideas| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | (Music playing.)
(Inaudible speech.)
| | 00:19 | Shoam Thomas: Sometimes working
digitally, thinking about space, isn't enough.
| | 00:25 | Google SketchUp has the tools to really
create the mass and the forms and start to get
| | 00:31 | in the details, but sketches are still
very important, and it's just because it
| | 00:36 | makes people concentrate less on
specifics and more about the generalities of
| | 00:42 | what you are trying to do.
| | 00:46 | It's like drawing with a big piece of chalk.
| | 00:49 | You end up having a limitation, but
actually that limitation makes you end up
| | 00:55 | evaluating the bigger picture much better.
| | 01:01 | And then you come to something like
building a scale model, a great tool for us
| | 01:05 | in the science museum, because you not
only get to do another thing that's not
| | 01:13 | on the computer, but it gives me lots
of different flexibility for something
| | 01:17 | like having meetings and
collaborating with my teammates, and be able to do
| | 01:22 | things like, maybe I just want to have
this thing kind of angled, because people
| | 01:26 | are going to be coming in from
this side, looking through.
| | 01:30 | So I possibly want to lure them in,
and almost have them flow into this back
| | 01:35 | staging area where we feel like
that could be like a collaboration,
| | 01:40 | contribution-type area.
| | 01:43 | So I am getting to dream up, and that's really fun.
| | 01:47 | I have always liked Google SketchUp.
| | 01:49 | The tool is efficient.
It can quickly generate things.
| | 01:55 | You can generate mass and form, but
sometimes what happens is you can also
| | 01:59 | get stuck because you end up
noodling things more than really exploding
| | 02:05 | the bigger idea.
| | 02:06 | So this is an invaluable
tool to help communicate.
| | 02:11 | It's all about making sure that idea
that I had I woke up this morning with, I
| | 02:16 | can quickly just jot that down.
| | 02:19 | (Music playing.)
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| Evolution of interactive media| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:12 | Bruce Wyman: Museums are interesting places.
| | 00:14 | They are conservative by nature.
| | 00:16 | But if you look at an institution that has
been around for a hundred or a hundred and fifty
| | 00:19 | years, or even longer,
| | 00:21 | there is a reason to have some kind
of sense of slow inertia in that sort of stuff.
| | 00:25 | But at the same time, there is a level of
mid-level museum professionals that are
| | 00:29 | now filtering up through the
ranks that are relatively progressive,
| | 00:33 | that in their own ways are pushing
their individual institutions, and constantly
| | 00:35 | evangelizing where things ought to
be, rather than where they have been.
| | 00:39 | And the case isn't always necessarily
'do things differently,' but rather,
| | 00:43 | 'let's try something that's
different and then validate it.'
| | 00:45 | If it doesn't work then, yes - by all
means, we will do what we know how to do very,
| | 00:48 | very well, and continue to do that.
| | 00:52 | Museums are very good at
servicing a core audience.
| | 00:55 | They get that in spades. It's really, how do
you grow that audience, and how do you begin to
| | 00:58 | engage with it differently?
| | 01:01 | So probably most importantly, and this is
certainly true for Second Story, is that
| | 01:05 | where traditionally you would
have seen maybe kiosks in a museum,
| | 01:08 | you would have had these kind of constrained
glass panels where all the magical stuff
| | 01:13 | was behind this, and you had to figure
out what the interface was, is that that
| | 01:16 | increasingly, you look at the
digital presence of that content.
| | 01:18 | That stuff can certainly not exist
just in this constrained space anymore, but
| | 01:23 | rather it can happen anywhere around you.
| | 01:24 | These surfaces can be things you interact with.
| | 01:27 | Your presence in the space begins to
make something happen that part of that
| | 01:30 | extends to an online experience, and
that rather is a digital presence of the
| | 01:34 | institution, that's the much more
important thing for the visitor.
| | 01:37 | I think that's an increasingly complex
layer that museums are struggling with,
| | 01:41 | certainly as with the rise of social media,
| | 01:43 | you begin to see how museums
try and relate to their visitors,
| | 01:46 | how they try and engage with them, to
| | 01:47 | make sure that things that happen on a
social level, or an online level, begin to
| | 01:51 | interact and stuff in
the galleries, and so forth.
| | 01:53 | So it's an increasingly complex
narrative, but it's also a very
| | 01:56 | interesting narrative.
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| Interview with Lynda| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Lynda Weinman: Hello! I am Lynda Weinman, and I
am here in Portland, Oregon with Brad Johnson and
| | 00:13 | Julie Beeler from the
interactive agency Second Story.
| | 00:18 | So you two obviously have been doing this
for a long time and seem to love what you do.
| | 00:23 | What is that that you love about your work?
| | 00:25 | Julie Beeler: For me, I am really enamored
with interactive storytelling, and I am really
| | 00:30 | passionate about different subjects and
content, and I love the idea that we can
| | 00:34 | put something together and peak
someone's imagination, spark their curiosity.
| | 00:38 | When you see audiences, of all ages, of
all different types, playing with it, and
| | 00:43 | they have that sense of emotion and
excitement in experiencing it, that's
| | 00:46 | what keeps me wanting to come back
and do it every day, day in and day out.
| | 00:51 | Brad Johnson: In the beginning, when I first
got introduced to this medium in like 93-94,
| | 00:57 | in the Bay Area, there was Voyager and
all of these great interactive titles in bookstores.
| | 01:02 | You were seeing these
CD-ROMs that you could get.
| | 01:05 | As the user, I was helping this kind of
story unfold in a way that reflected my
| | 01:11 | own unique interests and curiosities.
And our capabilities have just gotten more and
| | 01:16 | more enhanced over time.
| | 01:18 | So for me, what keeps it fresh and
exciting is new ways to help make it even more
| | 01:24 | memorable, to inspire wonder in
people in new ways, but really, still the core,
| | 01:29 | old-fashioned storytelling techniques.
| | 01:31 | Lynda: So what are the
challenges with telling an interactive story?
| | 01:34 | Brad: There are a lot of
different types of storytelling that we do.
| | 01:37 | A lot of it has to do with collections
of things, so there are stories to be
| | 01:41 | told with lots of different
objects in a museum, artifacts.
| | 01:46 | There are stories to be told where
you're bringing an event to life, or you're
| | 01:49 | bringing a culture to life.
And what I like to thing of is that interactive
| | 01:56 | storytelling is almost like a glue
that holds together different types of
| | 01:59 | media, whether it's video, images,
information, and what we try to do is find a
| | 02:05 | way that the glue can kind of
reconstitute all of this media, so it can be
| | 02:10 | served to different people in
different ways, depending on their own unique
| | 02:13 | interests and curiosities.
| | 02:15 | So finding a way to sort of break a
story apart is really the first part of
| | 02:20 | telling a story, interactively, and then
finding ways to serve it over different
| | 02:25 | types of technologies in different
contexts, for individuals versus groups, is
| | 02:30 | part of the challenge.
| | 02:31 | Lynda: So a lot of the beginning
process for us is the information design of, how is
| | 02:37 | the information going to be organized,
so that ultimately when it's put back
| | 02:40 | together interactively, a story can be told.
| | 02:43 | It's a fun way, where we are actually
deconstructing everything we are doing from
| | 02:46 | the beginning to basically
build a story back together.
| | 02:50 | Brad: We like to think of
it as kind of from the inside out.
| | 02:53 | We kind of start from, what is the
heart of the experience going to be, what
| | 02:56 | is the heart of the storytelling
components going to be, and how are we
| | 03:01 | going to serve those in a way
that's going to elicit the best kind of
| | 03:04 | experience intended for this audience?
| | 03:07 | So it's really, what's the heart
of the experience, and then ultimately,
| | 03:11 | what does it look like?
| | 03:12 | Lynda: So switching subjects
just a little bit to the issue of how you go
| | 03:16 | about hiring talent.
| | 03:17 | What are the types of skills that you
guys look for when you're hiring people?
| | 03:21 | Julie: Well, I particularly am
looking for skills where individuals are really
| | 03:25 | focused on their talent, and
they are really passionate.
| | 03:27 | And so I love seeing if someone has a
specific interest, passion, whatever it
| | 03:32 | is, that they really focus on
that and do that really well.
| | 03:36 | I think it's important that you, to a
certain degree, you have to be a generalist,
| | 03:40 | and have a big understanding of what's going on.
| | 03:43 | We have said for years,
| | 03:44 | it's like building a band, and it's
finding that individual with that really
| | 03:49 | great talent on that particular
instrument, and they can excel and perform those
| | 03:53 | amazing solos, but they can also come
back to the greater team and collectively
| | 03:57 | create great, beautiful music together.
| | 03:59 | So I think it's a balance between the two.
| | 04:01 | Lynda: So are you looking for
evidence of that in a portfolio, or is it more their
| | 04:05 | interpersonal skills that are
telling you about their passion.
| | 04:08 | Julie: Well, I definitely look
for it in their portfolios, because it's very easy
| | 04:12 | to see when someone has it.
| | 04:14 | It's transparent, and it just shows
through, and I think that it has to happen
| | 04:18 | before we will actually then go to
the next step of talking with them, and
| | 04:22 | then it is interpersonal skills,
communication styles, collaboration, problem-
| | 04:26 | solving, how they think, how they
communicate - all those sorts of things are a
| | 04:31 | big factor.
| | 04:32 | For us, they have got to be able to fit
in with the culture and the other team
| | 04:35 | members, and with a studio our size
everyone has to be a self-starter and be
| | 04:42 | proactive and have those skills and
want to work with other people in the team,
| | 04:46 | because we don't have lots of
layers in management, and so forth, so...
| | 04:49 | Lynda: That makes a lot of sense,
and I realize that technology is constantly
| | 04:53 | changing, and so is it less important
what kind of technology they understand,
| | 04:58 | or they have exhibited expertise in,
and more important that they are
| | 05:01 | adaptable, and you see evidence of that.
| | 05:04 | Julie: Yeah, definitely.
| | 05:06 | I think everyone comes knowing a suite
of software, and there's pretty much the
| | 05:12 | standards in the industry, and
everyone knows them. Some may have better
| | 05:14 | proficiencies than others, but for me
it's that adaptability and flexibility,
| | 05:19 | because one day we may be thinking, oh,
we are going to be go about it solving
| | 05:23 | some of the interactive design
solutions with this technology, and then we find
| | 05:27 | out we are actually going to use this
other technology, and being flexible to
| | 05:30 | move into those environments.
| | 05:32 | Because it's just constant and ever-
changing, so it's really, really a good skill.
| | 05:36 | Brad: We have a lot of people with
a liberal arts background, which really offers
| | 05:41 | a lot of fresh kind of collaborative
opportunities when we're coming up with
| | 05:45 | different concepts for how an
experience is going to come together.
| | 05:48 | I really like that.
| | 05:50 | One of the things I noticed that a lot
of the larger firms do is break apart the
| | 05:55 | interaction design from the visual design,
and we really are trying hard to keep
| | 06:00 | that together, so that the same
designers are really responsible for the vision
| | 06:04 | of how something is going to work, and
what that experience is going to be like
| | 06:08 | in the interface, and the way it's going to look.
| | 06:12 | When I found that those two roles get
split apart, that oftentimes you don't
| | 06:17 | have the same kind of
cohesive experience in the end.
| | 06:21 | So that's one of the things we look
for is, can someone really do both sides of that?
| | 06:26 | Lynda: Fantastic.
| | 06:28 | And I think my last question will be,
what it's like to work with your spouse?
| | 06:32 | It's an unusual partnership,
| | 06:35 | I suppose, to be married to
your business partner, right?
| | 06:38 | Julie: Yes, it is, but
for us, we don't know any different.
| | 06:41 | We met through working together, so we
always joke that it just comes naturally.
| | 06:48 | I think it's a constant evolution.
| | 06:52 | You definitely have to be open to
understanding what your strengths and what
| | 06:56 | your weaknesses are, so that you can
work well together and divide and conquer.
| | 07:01 | And so when Brad and I first started,
we were both doing design, we were both
| | 07:06 | doing development, and slowly but
surely, we realized we each had different
| | 07:10 | strengths in those areas, and we could
work together to build on those strengths.
| | 07:15 | And I think that's just a constant
growing and learning process, and especially
| | 07:20 | as the studio evolves and adapts
and changes, we do the same thing.
| | 07:23 | Brad: I think we kind of evolved
together to become better at what our own
| | 07:28 | strengths are, so that it's less
overlap than maybe it was in the beginning,
| | 07:33 | and Julie is really excellent at sort
of directing and leading the studio in
| | 07:38 | terms of the new business and the
relationships with the clients and the new
| | 07:42 | clients that we have, and organizing the
structure of the studio and how we get
| | 07:47 | everything done the way that we do.
| | 07:50 | And I am more into the creative
direction and that concept development of
| | 07:55 | the experience design.
| | 07:56 | So we've really sort of grown in
different directions, and I think that helps as well.
| | 08:02 | Julie: Yeah, Brad is excellent at
starting with a blank canvas and making
| | 08:06 | something beautiful out of it, and
amazing and wonderful and all the
| | 08:09 | creative, conceptual work, versus
| | 08:11 | that's not necessarily my strength.
| | 08:14 | Lynda: Well, in this day and
age, creating a company like yours,
| | 08:19 | which is so distinctive and growing in
a down economy, just congratulations to
| | 08:24 | you, and thank you for being
an inspiration to all of us.
| | 08:26 | Julie: Thank you!
Brad: Thank you! Appreciate it.
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