MOSTI - Interactive digital museum exhibit design

Commissioned by MTE Studios, an exhibition maker based in Dubai, Formula D interactive and partners developed 21 digital interactive media installations for a science and technology museum in Saudi Arabia. The interactive AV productions display various aspects of the technical and scientific advances of the Muslim world from 700BC to 1700BC in the fields of maths, medicine, botany, chemistry, astronomy, art and architecture besides others. The interactive AV's produced in the course of the project include touch tables, touch screens and other cutting edge interactive installations. During the 6 month design and production time, the design team worked closely with the client and researchers to conceptualize each application making sure the design of each interactive exhibit supported the exceptional visitor experience of the museum.

The work includes various Multi-touch tables:

Timeline Multi-Touch Table

The flagship exhibit of the museum is a 5 metre long rear projected multi-touch table allowing multiple users to interact simultaneously with a timeline of Islamic contributions to science and technology. Spanning a period of 1000 years, the timeline multi-touch table includes more than 300 historic events relating to important discoveries and achievements of the time. When first approaching the installation, visitors of the museum get an immediate overview of key events, which are represented as markers and title text on the sequential timeline. In order to contain the massive amount of content information in a seamless presentation across the table, the interface lets users open and close 20 year time windows by selecting the periods from either the Arabic or Gregorian calendar displayed on both sides of the table.

By touching the table's glass surface at the point of interest, one of the 20-year time windows opens. Next, visitors swipe their hand or finger up and down to revolve event icons around the central timeline bringing desired content to the fore. When a particular event has been selected, a window opens up showing images, animation and text related to the event. Language can be easily toggled between English and Arabic by swiping hand or finger across the content left to right or vice versa.

Events of major importance trigger "uber-animations" that span the entire table. This may mark the extra-ordinary travels of Ibn Battuta from Tangiers to China, or coins raining onto the table representing the first use of gold coins in the Arabic world.

To create a multi-touch table of this scale, the glass surface had to be divided into 3 sections, each producing an image of 167 x 125 cm with an overall resolution of 3072 x 768px. The graphical interface design creates the impression of a seamless surface across the 3 sections. Visitors explore the content of the timeline by walking around the table anti clock-wise. The GUI was developed in adobe flash using a live socket connection to synchronize the 3 platforms.

To achieve multi-user functionality, the development team made use of innovative camera tracking technology which identifies fingers and hands of visitors touching the surface. The interface works with intuitive gestures, such as dragging and swiping. The hardware was developed and built by the companies in Cape Town: all in all, the timeline touch table uses three quad core PC's, six tracking cameras, and six data projectors mounted under the table surface.

Geometric Art Multi-Touch Table

The Geometric art multi-touch table invites users to design their own Arabesque patterns using predefined elements. The application offers the option to re-create patterns which are displayed in the background of the table. Alternatively, users can create their own pattern using a repository of predefined elements. The table measures 1 metre square and uses 2 data projectors.

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