I had no idea how to develop the design for this. When starting to sketch I wanted to see if it could be referenced to writing systems and started developing sketches. However, it became clear to me that this idea felt quite simple and one-dimensional. So I booked a tutorial with Stuart, here are some notes from that:
Think more about how do people interact with that and the journey to getting to that object, can it be a series of questions to getting to an object, conclusion, curated selection of objects?
How do you get longevity in this project?
What kind of journey would people go through?
Can you ask speculative questions?
Think of a way to open it out a bit more. How is that done? A series of questions? Or another way? Be a bit more creative with that space. What if it was a mobile space? A black room? An abstract world? Sounds and everything? It does not have to be screenbased. It can be more speculative, stepping into your head, make it more engaging. Implement personal memorabilia? Think about it more artistically. It can be an abstract art project, a spatial project, a way to engage with personal history. “Loosen up a little bit more”.
For a couple of hours, it can’t be a website–where does that take me? Something that takes you of a different path
Look at how the user navigates through it, include personal things? Memory archive that people can feed into? Something to interact with.
https://www.universaleverything.com/projects/1000-hands
After the tutorial I was completely blank as Stuart had seen exactly what I felt was also the weakness of my project, yet I had no idea how to improve it and just sort of lied down avoiding it…… but as the night went on my mind started working and it was as if my brained boiled over and I started sketching in my note book as an idea took form that was a development from my existing one, yet with a more enhanced personal perspective.
The idea needed another dimension, before it was quite linear, just objects curated from a personal position/identity. The foundation is still there, but now you chose objects from the museum collection and pair them with personal ones that can represent a concept (for example family) from one of four temporal themes: “Birth and childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Grown up”, “Old age” that evolve into a timeline when done. (In the current sketches of the app, only the “Birth & Childhood” are developed). When you have finished all the steps in the app it creates a sort of timeline with the Science Museum’s objects as nodes.
The idea is also to be able to overlap timelines and stitch approved objects, sounds, videos and images between people that are relatives/friends. That way these timelines can become even more multi-dimensional.
As sketching went on I decided to ditch the different epochs, “Birth and childhood” etc and instead focus on more cultural themes when choosing objects.
Resources
https://www.universaleverything.com/