Kim Phu

Tagged in: interaction designer

• IkPod Nominated for a Spin Award!

  app, art director, award, designer, interaction designer, iphone, ipod, mediamatic, projects

  Mediamatic’s Ikpod for the Joods Historisch Museum has been nominated for a Spin Award in both the “Best Mobile Concept” and “Best Crossmedia Concept” categories, which means my first crack at designing an iPhone app isn’t totally pot!

  The ikPod itself lives at the Hollandsche Schouwburg where it is an interactive part of the Wall of Names:

  At the Hollandsche Schouwburg there is a wall of names, with all 6,700 family names of the Jews from the Netherlands who were murdered during the German occupation. The ikPod, an iPod specially adapted by Mediamatic, links the names on the wall to all the available information about all family members on the Digital Monument website. Visitors can read the names on the wall with the ikPod to learn the individual histories behind them. Visitors to the wall of names can now see information about family situations, addresses, and occupations, supplemented with personal stories and more than 10,000 photographs and documents. This makes the monument interactive and meets the growing need for individual commemoration, in a fitting, dignified manner.

  - Hollandsche Schouwburg

  1 Comment, March 25th, 2011

• Get Your Dutch History Cheap & To-Go at the Automatiek Exhibit

  amsterdam, designer, events, interaction designer, mediamatic, projects, RFID, videos

  The Automatiek exhibit at the Amsterdam Historical Museum features these classic, self-serve vending machines dispensing historical Dutch objects instead of the old, odd, fried piece of frikadel as teaser for the upcoming new National Historical Museum.

  There are a variety of objects to choose from ranging from the obvious Dutch cheese knife to the more obscure Dutch (?!) cassette tape. With each object only costing one or two euros, it’s easy to walk away from the exhibit with a whole lot of new Dutch stuff in your hands as well as in your head. Unless you are one of these people…

  The Oma-Hackers

  
  There’s always some one out there looking to beat the system, I just never thought it would be a pair of outlaw grandmas. These two gal pals showed up one day to the exhibit with their own previously made RFID cards. Many people who come to exhibit tend to recharge their card during their first visit to buy more objects, but to come back for seconds, it was unprecedented. Of course, more shocking was the fact that they just refilled their cards, bought their objects and tried to leave without even watching the movie (which I, personally, think is the best part of the whole exhibit). As some one who worked on the project, I had to stop them and ask them why.

  Turns out the Automatiek was the best deal on quality tea towels this side of Amsterdam. What normally costs a whopping €6.95 in the stores was only €2 here at the exhibit and everyone on the granny grapevine was trying to get in while the getting was good. Hey, it’s classier than going to the 99¢ Store, right?

  So come on down to the Automatiek exhibit before August 29th, 2010 at the Amsterdam Historisch Museum and get your tea towel today, while supplies last!

  More info:

  • “Trek in geschiedenis?”, Amsterdam Historisch Museum blog
  • “Bij historisch denken mensen aan oude meuk”, Volkskrant
  • “Writing history with objects”, Mediamatic Lab

  1 Comment, August 1st, 2010

• Adding and Managing New, Old Relationships

  interaction designer, jhm, mediamatic, projects, social, web designer

  

  To the common user, it’s as easy as adding a name in a field and clicking “ok”, but when you really break it down, the ability to add and manage relationships of friends and family on the Jewish Historical Monument Community site is a lot more than just that. This archive of Jewish people living in the Netherlands during the Second World War opened up their social network in order to let any user connect any profile to anyone, even if it had nothing to do with their personal network. The reason to break down this wall? Genealogy. The importance of having the knowledge that Person A is the great, great family member of Person B allowed the greater mass to fill in the holes that the historians could not.

  That’s where this flow chart comes in. Nothing says time wasted online like “genealogy”. In order to convince users to make these connections, we needed it to be a two to three click process max, unlike most genealogy sites which ask as many questions as your run-of-the-mill online matchmaking service. Pearing down the when, where and what to ask is a great exercise before designing any kind of form. It can also show you where unforeseen problems will arrive before you’ve designed enough pop up boxes to shake a stick at.

  No Comments » April 9th, 2009