Jonathan Alger

After years of quietly enjoying my ever-growing collection of books on exhibit design, museum planning and interactive spaces, I have finally come up with a way to share my bookshelf with everyone. I hereby announce the Exhibit Designer’s Bookshelf (beta), courtesy of Shelfari.
Click the link at the very top of this page, or here, and [...]

“It’s the new way to find your way at the American Museum of Natural History,” says the AMNH (and several hundred blogs) about their new iPhone app, appropriately named “Explorer:”

More from the Museum:
Chart your own course at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City with AMNH Explorer—a new app that is part [...]

Nearly as remarkable as the Shanghai 2010 World Expo: the Shanghai 2010 World Expo “Online Expo”. Nearly as remarkable as that (and entertainingly bizarre): the Shanghai 2010 World Expo “Online Expo” Official Preview Video:

“Ceaseless World Expo!”

If you can’t make it to Shanghai for Expo 2010, these three videos by the (accurately named) Shanghai Expo Timelapse Machine give a sense of the different kinds of pavilions on display. Germany: a deep, varied exhibition with a variety of completely different interactive zones in the interior:

Denmark, completely the opposite, with a beautifully designed [...]

Goooal! Three of the winning entries just announced in this year’s IDEA design awards were exhibit design projects. The judges might have had a case of World Cup fever: one of the projects hails from Brazil, the Museu do Futebol (The Soccer Museum); credited to designers Jair de Souza of Jair de Souza Design; Daniela [...]

A great, simple video of what everyone involved in interactive installation projects knows, but sometimes can’t articulate. By the Environmental Health Clinic at NYU, led by Australia-born conceptual artist Natalie Jeremijenko. Don’t let the name confuse you, it is a provocative design studio camouflaged as a university health think-tank, also apparently sometimes called the “x [...]

In case you missed it, Robin Pogrebin’s Brooklyn Museum article in the New York Times yesterday (“Brooklyn Museum’s Populism Hasn’t Lured Crowds”), has created quite a stir. The article itself is very much worth reading, if you are someone interested in successful visitor experiences of whatever kind. Just don’t expect pat answers, the jury is [...]

Are you as sick of your mouse as I am? Ever wonder why everyone in a two-handed species uses a one-handed interface? Via Swissmiss, the inventor of that Minority Report gesture-based computer interface demonstrates it in real time on the TED stage. “In five years, when you buy a computer, you will get this.” Brilliant.
(I’ll [...]

I do think about other things besides the Cooper-Hewitt. I just don’t blog about them, apparently. The Cooper-Hewitt’s recently-opened Triennial exhibit, “Why Design Now?” has me, well, thinking. My favorite project thus far, for a dozen reasons: the “Posterwall for the 21st Century” installation at the Graphic Design Museum in the Netherlands.
Created by design group [...]

Must-see: an enlightening and (very) information-packed discussion of social media and web strategy. By Sebastian Chan – charismatic director of apparently everything technological at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia – speaking at the Smithsonian (archived at the Smithsonian 2.0 video collection)

I promise you my best 140 characters on accessibility, architecture, education, exhibit design, graphic design, installation art, interaction design, museums, online exhibits, philanthropy, technology, video, and wayfinding. www.twitter.com/jonathanalger

“Chorus”, a kinetic installation with sound by United Visual Artists:
… an array of motor-assisted pendulums weaves through space emitting light and sound. The rhythm of the work evolves through chaos and returns to unison, producing a hypnotic and seductive performance that heightens the viewer’s awareness of the space and their relationship with it.
See a [...]

Inspiring! “Tidal Datums [adriensegalfurniture.blogspot.com] is a wooden table whose form is inspired by the formal language of data graphics. The table is intended to be a representation of analytic information through the medium of furniture. Data graphs were gathered from NOAA’s historic tide database, more specifically the measurements of tides at San Francisco Bay over [...]

A color-sensitive interactive billboard installation at Time Warner Center in New York. A clever interface between subject matter (an IBM campaign about smarter retail supply chains) and audience (retail shoppers at the most important end of that chain). But I can easily imagine other uses for this underlying idea in other public space applications.
(On a [...]

A new lamp for the home (and public spaces, methinks) conjures up sunny days on demand: “Reveal is a new type of ambient interior lighting. This product creates the impression of sunlight streaming through a window and onto an interior wall. A light breeze appears to move through trees in the cast image. The first [...]