Student using Global Origins

If you find yourself wandering through the Asian Art Galleries here at the IMA, take a quiet moment to follow the sounds of the Qin music. You will be led to a giant LCD display with a touch panel overlay and a hair dryer-esque sound dome above your head. Global Origins represents one of the first applications developed in-house by the IMA and marks a pivotal point in how the museum approaches technology.

I’ll step back a moment now and introduce myself. My name is Charlie Moad and I am an Applications Developer (a.k.a software developer) here at the museum. Now before you conjure up thoughts of suspenders and lisps, let me assure you I am quite the contrary. I have never played Dungeons and Dragons and I was only addicted to World of Warcraft for 6 months! I started at the museum 2 years ago and we have since hired another software developer and a graphics designer. Together we form what we call, the Applications Team. Traditionally museums outsource their technology which can be very expensive and time consuming. Each project requires bringing a new consultant up to speed on the basic operations of the institution. We allow the museum to retain knowledge and be more flexible when approaching technology.

Now back to Global Origins (GO). GO is an add-on to the NASA developed 3D world viewer, World Wind. Visitors are presented with a spinning globe and a series of stamps with works of art on them. Touching a stamp spins and zooms the globe to the respective origin and provides more information on the work and the culture. The application is meant to provide users with a visual orientation of where some of these works originated.

Global Origins using World Wind by NASA

We have been secretly collecting stats on this application since it was placed in the galleries almost two years ago. I pulled these stats a few days ago and found some impressive numbers. From October, 17^th 2006 to August, 28^th 2008 we have recorded 372,366 individual touches of the display. This averages almost 550 clicks per day with single day totals peaking over 3000. The graphic below represents where on the screen people have been clicking. The “hot spots” are in the expected places with one exception. People have a tendency to touch in the middle of the screen where the red and white target is located once a work is selected. While touching these targets has no effect, it definitely indicates the user wants more information about these geographic locations.

Click Heat overlay of Global Origins

Now let’s take a look at what works of art the users are interested in.  Below is a table which contains the 11 works that appear in GO.  Following that table is a chart containing the number of times a work has been selected by a visitor.  The spread seems fairly even except for two standouts.  It’s somewhat refreshing to see that the bright woodblock print of Mt. Fuji has a slight lead, and I suspect that the shar pei dog came in a strong number two because people like pictures of funny animals.

woman’s ceremonial skirt (33.682)	ritual wine server (guang) (60.43)
vase (maebyeong) (2001.223)	head of Buddha (1994.1)
Buddha of the Future (1995.1)	bull-shaped vessel (75.301)
seated shar pei dog (1999.2)	Fine Wind, Clear Morning (60.12)
storage jar (81.378)	Ichikawa Kakitsu as Ishidome Busuke and Arashi Kichirodku as Sagihira (72.47.271)
vase with dragon and cloud design (60.82)

Number of Views by Work

This post will be followed by similar ones that offer the outsider a peek into the technology operations of the IMA.  There is a common theme that allows us to be productive.  Open source software allows us to create a wide array of applications varying from the in-gallery interactive mentioned above to the blog you are reading right now.