Touchscreen interactive for the Chinese American Museum Los Angeles
I recently had the opportunity to again collaborate with the Chinese American Museum on an interactive touchscreen in-gallery kiosk. The piece is part of the exhibition Tales of the Distant Past: The Story of Hong Kong and the Chinese Diaspora and illustrates the Chinese diaspora around the world.
Design and development of the project began with a Museum-supplied spreadsheet of the Chinese population for each of the world’s countries, sourced from the Wall Street Journal. Realizing that many of the countries would be presented at sizes that would be much too small to work as touchscreen hit-targets, I combined them into 50 interactive pieces. Each of these pieces can be tapped to open up a detail screen presenting the Chinese population in each country.
The interactive was built using HTML/CSS/JavaScript, with SVGs for the maps. It’s presented via a web browser in kiosk mode, running locally on a computer housed inside the wall.
This is the second map-based touchscreen in-gallery kiosk I’ve created for the Chinese American Museum Los Angeles. The first was Origins: Monterey Park, A Chinese American Suburb, focused on the community around LA.
The Chinese American Museum Los Angeles, housed in the oldest and last surviving structure of LA’s original Chinatown, is dedicated to the Chinese American experience and history in Southern California.
Posted November 2015