High Tech meets Human Touch

Opening keynote at the 2017 Museums & Galleries of Australia Conference, Brisbane:

”New landscapes are emerging that blend technology, architecture, and the people that inhabit them in increasingly complex ways. How can such museum experiences be designed to foster meaningful human connections and interactions?

This question is central to the work produced by Local Projects, an experience design firm, based in New York, USA. The studio has won multiple awards for groundbreaking projects that integrate architecture and digital media, including the 9/11 Memorial Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Their work has enabled visitors to browse an art museum’s collection with facial expressions, monitored brain activity as visitors explore a science museum, and turned visitors into designers with an interactive pen.

To create captivating innovative environments that remain sensitive to the human scale, Local Projects leverages emotional storytelling, visitor participation, and shared social interactions. Their interdisciplinary team of architects, designers and technologists design experiences that encourage visitors to fully engage with body, heart, and mind.

John Ryan, Creative Director and Director of Interaction Design at Local Projects, will share the studio’s groundbreaking projects and investigate the design principles that have informed them, examining how such experiences can be both innovative and meaningful.”

Transcript

1. High Tech meets Human Touch John Ryan, Local Projects @johndryan, @localprojects
4. Museums + Technology
5. Google/British Museum
6. VR Scout
9. Double Robotics Marketing Video
10. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Developer Conference
15. Technology in service of human stories and emotion.
16. “What does it mean to be human in the age of intelligent machines?” — Dov Seidman, LRN in NYTimes nytimes.com/2017/01/04/opinion/from-hands-to-heads-to-hearts.html
17. How do we make experiences more human?
18. TOOLS CHAPTER I
19. Acheulean Hand Axe
20. The most significant step that ever was taken in human history, the thing that turns animal into man was making tools… — Louis Leakey, Paleontologist
22. Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum EMPOWERING WITH TOOLS
29. Walker Evans
30. Brett Victor
31. A tool addresses human needs by amplifying human capabilities. — Brett Victor, Designer
32. Brett Victor
33. The goal was to make the technology invisible. — John Lasseter, Pixar
34. Pixar’s Toy Story
35. STORIES CHAPTER II
36. Lascaux
37. The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms. — Muriel Rukeyser, Poet
38. 9/11 Memorial Museum FACILITATING STORY-TELLING
45. Give visitors tools to 
 craft their own narratives.
46. Facilitate a conversation between institution & visitor
47. One World Observatory FACILITATING STORY-TELLING
51. OBJECT & PLACE CHAPTER III
52. The environment is part of our cognitive system
53. Acheulean Hand Axe
54. Museum of the City of New York MAKING IT TANGIBLE
58. Our tools are trapped inside tiny rectangles. — Brett Victor
59. Cooper Hewitt Immersion Room MAKING IT TANGIBLE
62. MIRRORS CHAPTER IV
63. Photograph by Nickolas Muray McCall’s magazine, 1938
64. Yaroslav Segeda
65. Van Gogh self-portrait, 1889
66. Cleveland Museum of Art MIRRORING THE VISITOR
68. SLIDE TITLE Slide Subtitle 68
73. COLLABORATION CHAPTER V
74. cbsnews.com/news/millennials-admit-smartphones-are-sapping-their-happiness
75. popupcity.net/smartphone-zombies-please-stay-out-of-the-fast-lane/
76. “The best interfaces don’t connect us to technology; they connect us to other people.” — Amber Case, Calm Technology
77. ARoS Aarhus Art Museum FOSTERING COLLABORATION
78. Olafur Eliasson, Your Rainbow Panorama
82. PLAY CHAPTER VI
83. Source Unknown
84. Thinking happens in your hands
85. I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. — Confucius
86. Cirque Calder
88. “That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.” — Einstein
89. New York Hall of Science INVITING PLAY & DISCOVERY
92. Make it as real as possible, as fast as possible. — Amit Pitaru, FiftyThree
98. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals to discovery. — James Joyce
102. Apple Keynote
104. I. TOOLS II. STORIES III. OBJECT & PLACE IV. MIRRORS V. COLLABORATION VI. PLAY
105. Movie Her
106. Spotify
107. “Man vs. machine is no longer a useful distinction in terms of how we build stuff. This is an algorithmic recommendation but it’s humans all the way down. People are inspiring what’s happening.” — Matt Ogle, Spotify
108. “What does it mean to be human in the age of intelligent machines?” — Dov Seidman, LRN in NYTimes nytimes.com/2017/01/04/opinion/from-hands-to-heads-to-hearts.html
109. “If machines can compete with people in thinking, what makes us humans unique? The answer is the one thing machines will never have: ‘a heart.’” — Thomas L. Friedman, NYTimes
113. John Ryan @johndryan • john@localprojects.com www.localprojects.com Thank You