A Place for Art – Exploring Pathways through Museum Collections

Tim Wray, University of Wollongong

A Place for Art is an iPad app that allows users to explore and create pathways through the University of Wollongong’s Art Collection. As both an experimental interface and a companion piece to the print publication of the same name, the app demonstrates a rich and unique user experience with one goal in mind: to empower discovery, exploration and serendipity within collections of fine art.

This talk covers the context, rationale and philosophy of the app’s unique interaction design. By taking full advantage of the iPad’s gesture-based affordances, I describe some of the approaches and challenges we faced in its implementation. I also present an overview of the some of the other projects that showcase ideas of serendipity, discovery and play within cultural data using exploratory interaction design and data visualisation approaches.

This talk is aimed at those who seek inspiration in new ways of presenting data-driven or apps, discuss ideas on how we can craft amazing user experiences for presenting rich content, or perhaps see the beauty and amazing experiences that can be created from (re)-mixing data and presenting it in new ways.


Tim Wray is a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong that looks at how computational methods and new interaction design approaches can be used to create beautiful, engaging experiences for museum collections.


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