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Zaudhaus Creates Breakthrough Interactive Museum Exhibit for International Museum of Women

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 February 2006, 09:00 CST

On March 8, the International Museum of Women (www.imow.org) will launch Imagining Ourselves, an interactive multi-lingual gallery featuring over 300 interpretations from women answering the question, "What defines your generation?" The exhibit and technology platform, designed and developed by Zaudhaus Design Group (www.zaudhaus.com), is the first of many future exhibits the Museum plans to present utilizing this unique online exhibit platform to reach a global audience. The goal of the four-month exhibit is to unite and mobilize young women to make a difference, to increase the visibility of young women's leadership, and to connect advocacy organizations with a wider public. The site showcases stories from the Imagining Ourselves book (released in conjunction with the exhibit) in an online forum where visitors can not only read (and view) the stories, but also contribute their own personal anecdotes, photos, and comments. This global exhibit encourages organizations and community groups around the world to create local gatherings and community events to celebrate this generation of young women, to experience the Imagining Ourselves project, to share their own personal stories, and to take action. Organizers can establish event announcements on the site and then return after the event and post photos and event summaries.

What is an online global exhibit?

In starting the project, Zaudhaus studied the characteristics of museum exhibits and explored ways to translate the experience online. In a physical museum, a typical visitor experiences exhibits in two different ways. First, she 'browses' exhibits as she walks from point to point, gazing at different items in the museum space. When she notices something that catches her eye, she 'engages' with the exhibit, noting the detail and contemplating the larger significance of the work. Zaudhaus mimicked this duality by creating both a 'gallery' view of a story -- showcasing the high level summary of a story, as if from 'afar' -- and a 'detail' view -- where a visitor can delve deeper into a story and actually participate in discussion. "The exhibit is extremely engaging," says Amy Kopp, Zaudhaus Product Manager. "It was important to us to allow for many different vantage points and entries of engagement. The ability to add your story or comment allows you to be a part of this changing exhibit, and thus become an exhibitor yourself."

As a global site, the International Museum of Women exhibit presented a variety of challenges to the Zaudhaus team -- from multiple language support to working with a wide range of platforms and browsers. From the start, the Museum and Zaudhaus wanted to ensure that a wide audience of 'attendees' would be welcome at the exhibit. Zaudhaus used their considerable experience to make sure that all aspects of the site could be easily translated and 'localized' in the system. The site supports English, Spanish, French, and Arabic, can manage up to 20% line length increases in translated text, and reverses the entire text flow to accommodate the Arabic right-to-left reading style. Additionally, after much experimentation and study, Zaudhaus designed the site to account for common international technology limitations -- from bandwidth issues to legacy software challenges. With the high density of information the exhibit needs to convey, the team had to work hard to standardize the 'common bar' of usability for all represented nations, without compromising the design aesthetic.

Technical Details

The Zaudhaus team spent a significant amount of time exploring options for technical standards that would meet the specific needs of this site. While the team initially considered using open source technologies and Linux, budget constraints and the host of built in tools it provides made Microsoft's .NET framework the most appropriate technology to build on. "We just got so many things that were all built in," said Jesper Schultz, Lead Engineer for Zaudhaus. The exhibit also employs ON2 Technologies Flash-encoding tools for converting submitted video and audio files to Flash8 Video.

The 'gallery' view (patent pending) outlined above was conceived as a unique dynamic aspect of the site that needed special consideration in order to code. Stories are managed through the system's content management system. The gallery view is coded to 'smartly' determine the most relevant information to show visitors based on a multitude of algorithms and sophisticated programming. Thus, making the gallery view a dynamic representation of a story vs. needing editors to hand-create each gallery view.

About Zaudhaus

Founded by Victor Zaud in 1998, The Zaudhaus Design Group is a team of seasoned communications experts whose skills span a wide range, including traditional brand design as well as software and online application user interface design. Over the years, Zaudhaus has developed world-class brand programs and interface designs for an array of companies -- from small organizations and startups in their infancy to larger firms seeking to renew their connection to their audience. Zaudhaus is employed in a variety of markets ranging from technology-driven companies to resorts, consumer product companies and other experience-centric corporations. Their design solutions help clients increase market awareness, demonstrate strengths and benefits, and provide engaging online experiences. "We are designers who are business people and vice versa," says founder Victor Zaud.

Zaudhaus is also unique in that it has been instrumental in the founding and establishing of several high-technology startups as well as other consumer-branded companies. Participating as a legal founding entity as well as taking key leadership roles in the starting of companies, the Zaudhaus vision is a multi-faced one that incorporates the study of design communication and product development to ultimately build the most solid connections between companies and their audiences.

Source: Business Wire

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