In Touch: Connecting Cloth, Culture + Art

In Touch is a model for a highly engaging interactive museum Web site; utilizing multi-media and new technology to present and develop multiple streams of meaningful narrative around heritage objects. As an exhibition it stands out for its clear and beautiful graphic design (using a polar grid to lay out the UI in an elegant and unique way); effective use of images, audio and video to convey meaning and the integration of physics-based computer generated animations to impart to the user a very “real” sense of an object's physical nature as it moves. In the EXPLORE section rich themes are used to tell global stories from the perspective of individual objects with great effect. In the PLAY section users learn about the very real environmental issues that degrade museum objects all the while enjoying an engrossing, fast paced adventure game. An HTML version thoughtfully re-purposes the site content in a fashion suitable for people with special accessibility needs. In Touch is engrossing, deep and an excellent example of the intelligent utilization of Web technology to produce a successful museum exhibition online.