Responses by Zulu Alpha Kilo.
Background: Art can be perceived as intimidating to those who don’t consider themselves “art people,” making it hard for them to really relate deeply to art and making museums less desirable destinations. To forge that connection with newer audiences, we used technology to completely innovate the art experience from a passive visual one to something visceral and physiological.
Design thinking: We began by working with curators to create eight art personas based on themes to be represented throughout the gallery, such as power, spirituality and aesthetics. A design system was then developed to highlight each persona based on correlating art mediums and styles with short witty descriptors for each type.
The gallery was mapped with artwork beacons, which connected to tech-enabled wristbands given to participating visitors. These then monitored visitors’ physiological responses through heart rate, location and movement patterns as they explored the Art Gallery of Ontario.
The final output takes the data collected from every individual experience and visualizes it in a shareable format. This summary, held together with a bespoke Art Rate Monitor design system, includes the art that elevated your heart, moved you most, the piece that held your attention the longest, the color scheme you were most drawn to and identifies one of the eight art personas based on your specific art preferences. This not only gave visitors a snapshot of their visit but also a radically new way to view and understand their deeply personal connection to art.
Challenges: A visitor’s experience with the Art Rate Monitor is very simple; they just put on a wristband, look at art and get an email with their results. But the back end to make that happen was surprisingly complex with countless variables.
Working closely with the curators to find higher level themes in the artwork that could tie back to human drivers, which would ultimately define our personas, was both fascinating and complex. The idea required the mapping and tracking of hundreds of pieces of artwork and cross-referencing each with color palettes, art themes, personas and other data, resulting in thousands of different possible combinations of results a visitor could receive. It also took a small army of people to stress test the devices to ensure the data they received was correct and to work through and iterate any pain points of the experience itself.
Favorite details: We love how the design and animation for each persona came to life. Each visualization was deeply researched and grounded in the artistic themes it would represent. We also worked to ensure every aspect was considered from the materiality of the persona—such as glass, marble and bronze—to how each one animated to bring the qualities of the materials to life, from glass that has moving reflections of light to marble that crumbles off and then gets rebuilt, further reinforcing the personas themselves.
New lessons: It was fascinating to see how viewing art really impacts us on a physical level and how understanding that can change our art mindset. Art isn’t merely viewed; it is felt. Seeing this simple idea come to life through the activation is an incredible personal perception shifter.
Visual influences: Aside from the brilliant themes and mediums of art that the personas drew from, the design language was influenced by the heart rate monitor line as it forms the As in Art Rate Monitor’s visual identity. This is the consistent architecture for the visualizations of each persona. The heart rate monitor influence can also be seen in the cards of the sharable results as large numerals and key lines reflect how information is presented on an actual heart rate monitor device.