Home to the largest international collection of computing artifacts in the world

The Computer History Museum is the world’s leading institution exploring the history of computing and its ongoing impact on society. The Museum is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computer history and is home to the largest international collection of computing artifacts in the world, encompassing computer hardware, software, documentation, ephemera, photographs, oral histories, and Interactives.

I designed and produced several exhibits for the museum including "The History of Gaming", "Where To? A History of Autonomous Vehicles", and "Generations of Music Formats: The MP3 Exhibit". These were all very different projects with their own unique challenges, concepts and partners.

Where To? A History of Autonomous Vehicles

"Where To? A History of Autonomous Vehicles" was a collaboration between my team, the GoogleX team, and the Computer History Museum's staff to educate the public about the history of autonomous vehicles.

The biggest barrier to mass adoption of self driving vehicles for consumers is not the technology - It’s public perception. Every aspect of our modern society from the environment, legislation and lifestyle are impacted by this exciting new technology. Google and The Computer History Museum asked my team to create the first museum exhibit ever produced by Google to promote their self driving technologies to the general public.

Educating the public through hands-on and immersive experiences with the cars and technology is central to Google’s strategy for bringing the technology to mass market. We created an immersive exhibit that covers the entry halls of the museum, curated with artifacts, videos and interactives that explore self driving cars.

Car Placement and Demo

Central to the exhibit is the display of a Google Self Driving Car, placed for visitors to explore (sans keys :) ).

Exhibit Banners and Boards

We created layered stories throughout the space utilizing opportunities to guide visitors with hung and mounted content.

Initial Design

We produced paper-cut models of the space based on precise measurements to validate all printed boards and banners.

Illustration and Diagrams

The exhibit required custom illustrations and diagrams to demonstrate how the technology functions in traffic with pedestrians.

Exhibit Banners and Boards

We created layered stories throughout the space utilizing opportunities to guide visitors with hung and mounted content.

Design Treatment

All banners and boards were designed to ensure continuity of the exhibit content and narrative.

Generations of Music Formats: The MP3 Exhibit

"Make Software" is another huge multimedia experience that explores the history, impact, and technology behind game-changing software applications. Within the experience, we wanted to feature specific software, but we also asked ourselves: How do you get visitors to understand the technology of data storage and retrieval?

The answer came through the realization that most visitors love music and listen to MP3s all the time, so that was our hook to begin exploring a data storage narrative with museum visitors. "Generations of Music Formats: The MP3 Exhibit" guides visitors through an interactive exploration of analogue data storage (vinyl discs and cassette tapes) and digital data storage (CDROM and MP3). Along the way characteristics of each are demystified and together each media type explains how data gets stored in the form of music.

The great debates about music quality and market forces among key opinion leaders like Neil Young are shared, as well. The exhibit also engages visitors with a quiz, where one can listen and compare music quality and match samples of music to types of storage. I also developed the initial concept story boards for the other interactives in the exhibit: Adobe Photoshop (produced by Adobe), MRI, Car Crash Simulation, Wikipedia, and SMS Texting.

Demonstration

This video demos the complete narrative of the interactive exhibit.

Attract Mode

Attract mode engages visitors using anecdotes about the history of each media type.

Choose Path

The exhibit interactive has three modes: Attract, Play (Quiz), and Explore (Learn)

Explore / Learn

When a visitor selects to learn more about media storage, one is presented with multiple media types to select from to continue.

Learn About Each Media type

Each media type is paired to a type of music and a color. When the visitor selects a media type, an audio sample plays and the media visual expands to reveal more content to explore including audio samples and videos.

Quiz Orientation

A simple orientation video displays to explain how to play the quiz.

Taking Quiz

Matching the music samples to the meida type quizes the visitors ability to match the unique sound of each sample to the correct media type. Vinyl has audible 'pops', whereas cassette tapes have a higher pitch quality.

Quiz Score

Each quiz is scored. After the visitor takes a quiz they are encouraged to learn more or play again with a new randomly generated selection of samples and media type combinations.

Storyboards

I provided direction in the form of these storyboards to the creators of other interactive screens in the exhibit. The original concept for the MP3 interactive was to create a sample mixer to tell the story of music quality. This turned out to be far too complex, and we refined the interactive to the current / final direction.

The History of Gaming

"The History of Gaming" interactives are apart of "Revolution", a 25,000 square foot, multimedia experience that immerses visitors in the sights, sounds and stories of the computer revolution. We collaborated with curators to produce the interactive game exhibit for Revolution. The games we produced, along with information graphics and videos, are apart of the exhibits overall narrative to share the experience of gaming at various levels of early development. Our contribution allows visitors to play some of the most influential games from the era of early computing.

Each game presented unique challenges in recreating the original, authentic experiences. We developed a framework approach for the exhibit devised to trigger different states and attract modes, with custom features implemented for each game. User inputs are different for each game (Adventure uses a keyboard whereas Pong uses wheels), so our game framework handles I/O from USB controllers custom fabricated for the exhibit. Each game required in-depth research and Quality Assurance testing to ensure that the exhibit game retained parity with the original game released decades ago. Adventure, for example, is a text based game with thousands of potential paths and combinations - much like a choose your own adventure

book - but way larger. For Space Wars, the original game used a unique phosphorus glass which generated a luminescent visual trailer on the space ships and missiles, which we recreated using code in the game framework. We took painstaking care to recreate each tiny detail for every game, even redrawing Pacman original art pixel-by-pixel to ensure that the original grittiness of the game represents accurately on the high quality LCD monitors used in the exhibit. Although each game is very different, the implementation of each game is designed to fit as a family to maintain continuity within the exhibit.

Research: Space Wars

Our research revealed that Space Wars never made it out of the garage - there aren't any marketing or design materials to review and influence the exhibit version of the game. Therefore, we produced our own 'branded' version of the game (seen above) to demonstrate its potential in the marketplace had it been distributed.

Space Wars Play Mode

Space Wars was originally on a much larger screen then what was available for the exhibit, and it was circular screen. We utilized the surrounding area of the game to explain the complex controls and brand the game for the exhibit space. The original game had a unique phosphorus glass that generated a trailer effect on the spaceships during flight - which we generated using scripting to match the original.

Space Wars Attract Mode

The attract mode is based on a sensationalized version of the game, with the same graphic rocket ships attacking each other in a 3D space.

Research: Pong

Although our research into the history of Pong revealed several 'brands' of the game as depicted here, we used the purest elements from game Play in our implementation of the exhibit. Not only did this provide clarity for the visuals of the game, it contributes to the impact the game has on viewers since it is presented at a much larger scale then the other games.

Pong Play Mode

The format for Pong is slightly different because it is on a much larger screen then the other games in the exhibit. Pong was probably the simplest game to design for, given the original graphic treatment is the purest game UI, and the display for the game was intended to effect the viewer based on sheer scale rather then additional graphic representations of the game.

Pong Attract Mode

Like the game Play mode, the attract mode for the Pong game is very simple. Using paddle and ball metaphor from the game, visitors are encouraged to interact with the console. There are also multiple 'Tron-like' animation sequences of the game Play experience.

Research: Pacman

This is a page from our research documentation. Like many vintage games, Pacman has had many rebirths from arcade to home console. We decided to use the influence from the original arcade experience to guide our implementation of game Play and visual design.

Pacman Play Mode

The attract mode for Pacman is a combination of 3D game Play videos and animated character artwork from packaging and the game experience.

Pacman Attract Mode

The attract mode for Pacman is a combination of 3D game Play videos and animated character artwork from packaging and the game experience.

Research: Adventure

As text-based game, ironically Adventure (originally called Colossal Cave Adventure) offered the greatest variety of imagery from our research. When people played Adventure, they would illustrate large maps of the game to follow along with during the game Play We discovered entire of libraries of hand-drawn illustrations - much like one would find in the Dungeons and Dragons communities, or in its more modern form in Zelda - outlining how to get from room to room and place to place.

Adventure Play Mode

Each game has a 'skin' based on the technology or packaging from its original release. Adventure was a text-only experience, so we used visual type solutions in the design of this game.

Adventure Attract Mode

Each game has an 'attract mode' to intrigue visitors to interact with the game console. Since Adventure was a text-only game, we used type and animation to illustrate objects from the game narrative.