LA Museum of the Holocaust Experience

October 2010 – Keywords: Architecture, Environmental Display, Exhibits, Touch Screen, Projectors, Audioguide, Web, Mobile

We created one unified content experience and make it accessible, personal and seamless across many different media platforms.

The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust is the oldest Holocaust museum in the United States and has an extensive collection of physical content, including photographs, video testimonials, physical artifacts, and an archive of stories from living survivors. After examining their collection and old museum, we devised a new strategy that showcases and optimizes the entire breadth of the museum’s collection across multiple platforms and mediums, creating a new type of mediated museum experience.

During this 18-month project, we designed and developed everything in the museum that relates to content: from the overall narrative of the museum experience, down to the specific interactions of the interactive displays and on the web. Variate Labs designed, developed and oversaw the creation of the new museum database, database standards, digitization workflow, website, print exhibits, spatial audioguide, ‘World That Was’ interactive table, ‘18 Camps’ networked exhibit, individual exhibit video displays, audioguide takeaway and logo. Each of these components were essentially individual projects in-and-of themselves, but collectively added up to an overarching and cohesive museum experience. Over the course of this project we developed the following:

Research & Functionality: Existing Museums and Websites, Audience Identification, New Web Functionality (Three Phases), All Functionality Relating to All Interactive Exhibits, Personas and Use Cases, Interactive Standards and Concepts

Content: Content Roadmap, Museum Database, Content Standards, Digitization Workflow, Content Creation Training, Print Exhibit Planning

Print and Interactive Media: Spatial Audioguide, Audioguide Takeaway, ‘World That Was’ Interactive Table, ‘18 Camps’ Freestanding Networked Exhibit, Individual Exhibit Video Displays, New LAMH Website, ‘Current Events’ Interactive Touch Wall Exhibit (not built yet), ‘Shoah Survivor Wall’ Interactive Exhibit (not built yet)

An Integrated Architectural Experience

We had the pleasure of working with renown architect Hagy Belzberg Architects to create the new interactive museum user experience concept. We worked closely with the museum and the architect for 1.5 years to see this project realized,

Comprehensive Interactive Museum Experience

Rendering of the new lobby and nine different exhibit rooms. Variate Lab’s new content strategy included designing every aspect of the new content experience. The new museum experience consisted of a lobby and 9 different exhibit rooms. Each exhibit room had a different theme and would take the user on an emotional journey from Room 1: The World that Was (a historical look at the history of Jews in Europe prior to the Holocaust) to Room 7: Life After Liberation and the Founding of the Jewish State. Rooms 8 was a temporary exhibit space and Room 9 showcases videos of survivors talking about their experience from the Shoah archive.

We came to the table with the following ideas to guide the project:

1. Let content speak for itself, by keeping designs simple and avoiding non-essential navigation elements.

2. Create one unified content set that is both digital and physical.

3. Use digital technology to give context to the museum’s physical artifacts.

4. Create personal connections between content and each user.

5. Embed and integrate the content and technology into the architecture of the museum itself. The architecture of the physical space and the architecture of the museum’s content should mirror each other.

Developed Use Cases

Variate developed a number of different archetype personas that represented museum goers. After analyzing the museums content offering and the behavior of the personas, Variate designed a number of different use cases for the new museum experience that would showcase the rich content of the museum. A number of interactives were designed to give context to specific artifacts and to showcase a rich variety of content when there were space limitations.

As part of each use case Variate created concept designs for each of the interactive exhibits. Variate worked closely with the museum to make sure the new strategy addressed and engaged their audience.

Existing Museum Content Audit

When Variate Labs started the project, all artifacts in the current museum were analog and physical. Variate designed a workflow that would allow the museum to capture and document all of the artifacts. This included designing the new database standards, outlining the workflow, aiding in the purchase of all digitization materials and teaching the staff how to digitize content.

Immersive Content Strategy

Variate Labs worked with the museum to plan every image in the print displays. Artifacts are shown in freestanding cases in each room.

Planning the Museum Narrative

Variate Labs worked with the museum to plan every image in the print displays. Variate worked with the museum through nine rounds of content layout design.

Designing and Prototyping the Displays

Variate Labs worked closely with architect Hagy Belzberg to design and test the new exhibit case prototypes.

Building a New Website

This image shows the new virtual tour on the new Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust Website. Visitors can select specific rooms to view collection highlights from each room. Variate Labs determined the overall concept and functionality for the website and worked with FastSpot to design and develop the user interface and content management system.

18 Camps Interactive Exhibit

This image shows the final freestanding monitor displays in the 18 Camps exhibit of the new museum. Visitors can learn about all of the camps by watching a smart networked attract state or stop and touch an individual monitor to view the details of a specific camp. Visitors can also listen to audio files on the new audioguide that seamlessly sync with survivor videos on each monitor.

World That Was Exhibit

The concept behind the new World That Was Interactive Exhibit was to create a fluid system to showcase 25,000 images of the Jewish community before the holocaust. The design uses a pool metaphor whereby images and videos float to the surface and become visible to visitors. Visitors can touch images to view them or drag an image to the edge of the table to view more information. The images appear to be organized randomly inside of the interface but after they are dragged to the edge of the table relationships are shown between different types of content. Visitors can then select various related themes and explore other images and videos with the same theme.

Spatial Audioguide

The new LAMH audioguides allow visitors to play content organized by room (browsing content) or by entering a specific audioguide number (finding specific content). Variate designed an audioguide system that would seamlessly sync audio on the device to videos located on interactive screens throughout the exhibit. Rather than going with a typical -Touch to begin- mentality the new museum would let videos continuously loop and visitors could listen to synced audio just by entering in an audioguide number. This audioguide system was built and to date its functionality has never been replicated in another museum environment.

General Video About The Project

Video coverage from broadcast news.

Museum Press

Good Magazine
ABC7
Architects Newspaper
LA Times
The LA Mayor’s Flickr Photos of the Opening Ceremony
Hagy Belzberg Architects Website