Aral Sea at Übersee-Museum Bremen

Tags: Exhibition DesignSvelteData Viz Date published:
The assembled exhibit after delivery in the Übersee-Museum (excuse the bad footage, after eight hours in the train and no sleep, I wasn't exactly awake…)

In late 2021, my former team members and I were contacted by the curator of an upcoming exhibition at Übersee-Museum Bremen. They were currently planning an exhibition about cotton and became aware of our Aral Sea project from 2017, a topic that would fit perfectly in the upcoming exhibition.

The exhibits’ structure should largely stay as it was in out first version, but with more and diverse content (written by an expert this time) focusing on cotton.

We developed structure and content alongside our design content, exchanging ideas and iterating over the first half on 2022 until we went into production of our new physical interface and the digital UI.

Design and ConceptSection titled Design and Concept

A request from the curator, was to have three main topics, and their development throughout the decades from 1960 to 2020 that could be viewed chronologically. The topics were Aral Sea, cotton, and politics.

Early concepts of a 'lane' layout. Users could expand one of the three topics to access more detailed information.
Early concepts of a 'lane' layout. Users could expand one of the three topics to access more detailed information.

We started playing around with different concepts, like the lane layout pictured above. The goal here was to make it obvious and easy to visitors passing by, where they could get information, so that nothing would be hidden.

First screen designs were based on that concept, but because test users were frustrated by the small and unreadable content. we eventually decided to focus one topic at a time. It would still be necessary to switch between topics, but at least one of them would always be expanded and optimally readable.

Iterating Screen DesignsSection titled Iterating Screen Designs

One of the first designs with prototype styling. It introduced the possibility to switch topics at the bottom of the screen.
One of the first designs with prototype styling. It introduced the possibility to switch topics at the bottom of the screen.

DevelopmentSection titled Development

Using my experience with Svelte I started building the front-end for this exhibit,

I started playing around with small toy projects in Svelte and SvelteKit since around 2021. This project was the first big project where I could apply my new front-end development skills in a not overly complicated environment, since we could package all information on-device, without a database and server.

Final versionSection titled Final version

The version that eventually shipped with the device. Design direction was locked in early so we spent more time focusing on usability improvements and clarity. We included support for german and english and moved the lake itself into the middle to better show the changing surface.

Users can view different media scattered around the lake like photographs on a table.
Users can view different media scattered around the lake like photographs on a table.