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MIT Center of arts visual arts exhibit
Optimized for online experience during covid-19
Trapped showcase is a visual arts project from Elaheh Ahmadi, an artist from Tehran who focuses on experiences of women and being trapped in definitions of womanhood.
We worked on creating a digital exhibition that had to take place instead of the physical exhibition due to the unforeseen circumstances of the pandemic.
Challenges
Designing a fully remote art exhibit
We worked with Elahe Ahmadi from MIT to create a user experience worthy of the art being showcased.
Since we were trying to recreate the atmosphere of the in person exhibition, initially we were looking to build a 3D style augmented reality website but then decided an elegant black and white website would showcase the images and their accompanying text counterparts in the most efficient way.
Team
I was in charge of UX and Web Design.
Elahe Ahmadi was the photographer and the developer.
We worked with MIT Weisner Art Gallery to bring this project to life.
Tools
We used slack and whatsapp to communicate across Los Angeles and Boston, Wordpress for hosting, Divi Builder to rapidly prototype and develop web designs and create responsive experiences.
Product
The end product was a 26 screen photography exhibition website that incorporated elements from the photographs and models to best portray and showcase the Images in a profound yet simple way.
Sketches to Prototype
Elaheh worked as the developer on this project and we created wireframes, prototypes and the final version all within our Wordpress builder, the Divi builder.
Using this builder allowed us real time changes to structure and library changes while working from Boston and Los Angeles. The way we both code-switched back and forth across Farsi and English led itself to some strange but cute conversations.
The only problem to this method in hindsight is the lack of evidence as we changed elements around rather fast building non linearly as we went.
UI Design
We optimized the designs for desktop, the photos were meant to be printed and examined in a bigger real life format so a bigger screen was the best platform. We did make sure that the mobile experience is also pleasant and that nothing breaks or cause a loop.
I followed the visual design set by the photos to best showcase them. A dark background and white typography created a rather elegant, feminine yet powerful stage for the photos in this remote exhibition.
We made sure to include small details for each model to convey their personality in their showcase web page.
Lessons from Trapped the Showcase:
It was a joy to design this project for such a talented person such as Elaheh. Getting to work on an MIT project was also an amazing opportunity. I found it very satisfying to design for right to left alignment for Farsi, it gave way to more challenges in layouts with the English write ups and prioritizing the photos.
See the showcase:
Click below to see the showcase of Trapped for MIT Art Gallery.
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Contributors
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Screens
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Iterations