WordCamp

In 2017 I presented at two WordCamps: DC with Desi González, and Austin with Zack Rothauser.

Here’s how we described the DC talk:

In May 2017, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA rolled out a redesigned website, built on on WordPress. In addition to taking advantage of an easy-to-use content management system and a strong open-source community, the move to WordPress opened opportunities to solve perennial museum website problems.

We will discuss the development of the website’s content strategy and design, informed by analytics and qualitative user research. We will demonstrate the ways we built the new site to solve specific museum and user needs, including designing a system of flexible page templates, solving event calendar challenges, and implementing systems/workflows for managing intellectual property restrictions for collection images.

And here’s how we described Austin:

This talk will present a look under the hood of some WordPress-powered museum projects. We’ll explore WordPress as a solution to a variety of common problems, including powering websites, digital publications and in-gallery experiences. Our lens will be recent projects for the The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; The Clyfford Still Museum, Denver; The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History and others.

In addition to taking advantage of an easy-to-use content management system and a strong open-source community, WordPress opens up opportunities to solve perennial museum website problems. We will discuss the development of museum websites’ content strategy and design, informed by analytics and qualitative user research. Additionally, we will demonstrate the ways we’ve solved specific museum and user needs, including designing a system of flexible page templates, solving event calendar challenges, and implementing systems/workflows for managing intellectual property restrictions for collection images. We will also explore how WordPress can be used to power experiences outside of traditional websites, including membership renewal and constituent management, online exhibition catalogues and touchscreen video kiosks.

Posted Oct 30, 2017

Zack Rothauser and I will be heading to WordCamp NYC 2018 to give a presentation on the Clyfford Still Museum’s web-based touchscreen video platform.

Since the introduction of the WordPress REST API, the potential for using it to power React applications has generated much excitement among developers. But what is an actual use-case for these technologies, and how can it improve the user experience? In this presentation we’ll show how WordPress was used as a foundation for building an in-gallery video kiosk for the Clyfford Still Museum.

We’ll begin by looking at the design process for a museum experience: How digital design can reflect the physical space in which it is installed, and how graphic and movement choices affect visitors’ sense of intimacy. We’ll show how the video kiosk platform was built to scale with the museum’s growing video library, how we made the videos accessible to people with hearing impairments, and how we designed the system to be content-managed from afar.

From there, we’ll demonstrate how content-management via WordPress combined with the REST API and a React front-end provide an intuitive experience for administrators and users, save development time, and provide a smooth native-app-like experience. We’ll finish by detailing the hardware used to present the system in-gallery.

We’d like to thank WP Engine for supporting this presentation.

Posted Aug 14, 2018