Biography of a Redwood

Client:
The California Academy of Sciences museum

San Francisco, CA

2018

A responsive web app built to explore all the specimens and artifacts in the Hidden Wonder’s exhibit. Explored both on personal mobile devices and 15 installed touchscreens. Content in four languages which was a first for the museum.

Clickthrough of this interaction to show the UX and animations

In situ

Installed exhibit photos with visitors using the interactive

Key screens

  • 1. Home Screen. View 1 with hotspots about the tree slice in front of the touchscreen.

  • 2. Home Screen. View 2 with a timeline of historical events this tree was alive for.

  • 3. When different years are selected on the timeline the tree ring highlights. Major historical events from around the world are included.

  • 4. A detail story with a video about the study of tree rings (dendrochronology).

  • 5. A detail story about why different tree rings are different widths. This was highlighted with annotations.

  • 6. A detail story with an animated gif showing how tall the tree grew during the nearly 700 years it lived.

  • 7. A detail story with an infographic about a specific part of the tree (hightlighted in the bottom left corner of the screen).

  • 8. Attract animation highlighting all of the tree rings in the interactive. This was used as a default state when the screen was not being used.

Behind the scenes

User testing, process, iterative reviews

The Team

Andrew Sawyer – Visual Design, Animation & UX
Sarah Goodin – Content
James Davidson – Illustration
Kat Whitney – Photography
Greg Rotter – Web Development
Ryan Byarlay – Infographics