The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture is the only museum of its kind, devoted to exploring, documenting, and showcasing the African American story. Our teams at FANTASY & Fearless were tasked with translating the immersive, emotional journey of the museum into a digital experience with the Searchable Museum.
MY ROLE
UI Design Intern
Hi-Fidelity Design
Storyboarding
Asset Creation
UX TEAM
Ane Aroburu, Tom Acker, Trisha Wittenbrink
The National Museum of African American History & Culture has welcomed millions of in-person visitors. However, it is still limited to the confines of its physical space in Washington D.C. Therefore, our task was to bring the Slavery & Freedom exhibit to audiences across the globe by translating the immersive in-person museum experience to every digital device.
INTEGRATED VISUALS & VIDEOS
Walking through the in-person exhibit you experience a symphony of sound and visuals. Therefore, we designed an immersive, dynamic website that shows vs tells through an emphasis on visuals like video walkthroughs, visualized data, and key imagery.
Our creative team designed the Constellation experience, interactive 3D models, and step by step artifact walkthroughs to allow viewers to explore physical artifacts in a way that reflects the real-life experience.
CHAPTERS & STORIES
The Searchable Museum allows viewers to deep dive into stories and collections at their own pace, through offering interactive timelines, chapters, document highlights, cards, quote callouts, Lesser Known Stories, and more.
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In addition to our primary design challenge of converting NMAAHC's physical Slavery & Freedom Exhibit to the online Searchable Museum, we also had to design the experience across all digital devices. On the UI design team, this meant visualizing the dynamic experiences of timelines, chapter navigation, etc. to all sizes and orientations. This required our team to problem solve for how to make the experience functional and cohesive no matter where you viewed it.
On a project of this magnitude, it was essential to establish a design system that would anchor the visual immersion of the site. With so many unique chapters and experiences, our design system unified the site.
REFINE THE DETAILS
On the user interface design team, we were laser focused on the high fidelity details of the project. We created hundreds of iterations and spent weeks pushing pixels to perfection to eventually hand off to development.
WORLD-CLASS TALENT
It was an honor to be a part of this monumental project. I learned a tremendous amount from my colleagues, Ane Aroburu and Tom Acker, and the importance of collaborating and learning from world-class creatives.
