Nov
6
Roots of Technology Touch Screen
We’ve been having a blast with those Rock Star’s from Wireframe Studios.
Paul and his team of geniuses have recently completed a mammoth job for MTE Studios’ … over 20 interactive installations for the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Dubai – and we helped build one of them: The Roots of Technology Touch Screen.
Inventions made by Islamic scholars are often incorrectly attributed to modern western scholars. Not only that, but the sheer breadth of these inventions (over 8 categories!) is largely not recognised today. We wanted to inform the visitor how much older an invention or discovery is than perhaps previously realised, as well as reattribute a discovery to a much earlier Islamic Scholar. Furthermore, we wished to make the visitor appreciate the relevance of an old invention in today’s modern world.
The content showed us that we needed to accommodate for over 160 individual inventions and it became quickly apparent that this application needed to be based on a timeline. We considered various iterations before settling on the direction below. A prototype was designed for testing with the sheer volume in mind – so we developed a back-end content management system to load the various discovery and invention items. In some instances the information included the incorrectly credited Westerner as well as a modern update to the invention – in these instances we include functionality that allowed the viewer to ‘flip’ the content box to it’s reverse side. Just when we thought we were winning … someone said ‘… and what about that Arabic translation?’. Arrghhhhhh. 
We decided that the date needed to be clearly visible at all times and designed a finger-driven timeline scroll that allows the visitor to whizz through time at the slide of a finger. Now … where did I park that De’Lorean?
