International Museum of Women
Imagining Ourselves Online Exhibit

Originally housed in one of the famed piers of San Francisco, the International Museum of Women decided to explore a new business model rather than search for new space after their exhibit space was found to need seizmic retrofitting at an exhorbitant cost. Zaudhaus was asked to explore and ultimately design and produce a new kind of Web-based museum exhibit.
Web Site
http://imaginingourselves.imow.org

Year Built: 2006
Project duration: 8 months
Zaudhaus role: Concept, Interface Design, Engineering

Services
Site Design & Development
Custom Web Applications

Industries
Media & Entertainment
Non-Profit
STATS
RELATED
CHALLENGE + SOLUTION
The Challenge: Develop a Web-based Editorial Engine that can manage a variety of content types while displaying the content in an ever-changing, editorial format that people will want to actually read. Make the system easy to use and manage by 4-5 IMOW Staff (read: non technical), and provide the tools by which the visitor can add content, engage, and interact with the story authors.

The solution we built engages visitors like an online magazine or video sharing site - certainly emphasizing the editorial quality of the home page. We spent a great deal of time reviewing other museum's sites as well as other online exhibits. We reazlied that readability and its importance prompted us to investigate the most engaging sites that promote reading online. We determined that the museum model included two ways to experience an exhibit. First, when visitors first arrive, they tend to window-shop as they walk by the initial exhibit space and glance at the most noticable visuals to see if they want to engage. Next, engaging in the exhibit, they go in and want to get a sense for the overall exhibit space and then explore. We worked to accomplish that same model with our Highlights View and Full Story View. The highlights view is actually generated automatically by the system as it reads the full content of a story and determines (based on a complex set of rules) how best to lay out the highlights view. This concept is currently patent-pending.
“The Zaudhaus team put together a product that far exceeded our expectations —visually beautiful, easy to manage, and seamless deployment.”
- Paula Goldman, Founding Director, Imagining Ourselves Exhibit,
Intenational Museum of Women