SFMOMA Gets New Kiosk Interface System

SFMOMA Gets New Kiosk Interface System
The San Francisco Metropolitan Museum of Art recently tapped Method to help museum visitors make sense of modern art via a new kiosk system.

For SFMOMA, Method solved a long-standing communication problem for the leading art museum and:

Made complex information comprehensible to mass audiences,

Demonstrated the very latest design trend: an emphasis on interface along with graphics,

Earned one of the design industry's most elusive awards.

Over the past several years, SFMOMA curators noticed that visitors were often confused and intimidated by the existing multimedia presentation of the museum's exhibits [in other words, one of the most common characteristics of bad design].

In order to improve the flow of information and visitor satisfaction, SFMOMA enlisted Method to restructure the content to be presented, complete with a new graphic appearance.

Based on its work for such varied clients as Autodesk and Gucci, the team at Method knew that a proper solution required the combination of visual design with a user interface. Without the alliance of the two components, the kiosk system would either look pretty but remain confusing or convey static data without the visual richness expected of an art museum.

In its solution, Method distilled the content-from several digital formats-of thirteen museum programs in