Web-based Touchscreen Video Kiosk Platform for the Clyfford Still Museum
Clyfford Still Museum’s new video kiosk platform was built to scale with the museum’s growing video library. The priorities for the system were to make the videos accessible to people with hearing impairments; to design a system that could be content managed from afar; and to create an architecture that could scale with the content—one that could easily accommodate as many videos as desirable, and allow for flexibility in the organization and presentation of those videos on a station-by-station, screen-by-screen basis.
It features touchscreen navigation; closed captioned videos; and the ability to create, publish, and maintain multiple custom interfaces simultaneously. Although the application was built for onsite audiences, the new system leverages web standards for accessibility and sustainability.
The technical configuration is a lightweight, easy-to-update system that fits well into CSM’s technology stack and can accommodate an infinite number of videos and combinations thereof. The interface’s content management is handled through WordPress. The application itself is written in React JS, and communicates with WordPress via a JSON feed. The videos and captions are hosted on Vimeo and accessed by the kiosk application through Vimeo’s API. Each station runs on a Mac Mini that is configured for touch inputs (which is not native in Mac OS). The application runs in Chrome through the Kiosk app extension for a frameless, secured experience.
“Emotion, Intimacy and Space: Designing and Developing the Clyfford Still Museum’s In-Gallery Video Kiosk System,” to be presented at the MCN Conference in November 2018, will discuss how digital design can reflect the physical space in which it is installed, how graphic and movement choices affect visitors’ sense of intimacy, and how the interactive components of museum visitors’ experience can be made approachable through the collaborating disciplines of design and development.
This project was a collaboration between Normal, Spellerberg Associates, Will Meier, and Zack Rothauser. The internal team for this project included Sarah Wambold, Victoria Eastburn and Dean Sobel.
Posted July 2018