Technology That Disappears

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on some pretty intense projects at work in anticipation of big exhibition opening this weekend. One of the projects shipped today and I’m extremely proud of the work my team did to bring this concept from a loose idea to a delightfully useable thing.

The CMOA companion app is loaded with some interesting features, but my favorite one is likely the simplest. While visiting museums, I’ve often wished I had a bookmarklet or a “Read Later” service through which I could revisit and deep-dive on the works I personally enjoyed in the gallery. I regularly want to know more about a work or artist, but don’t want the multimedia/technology/screen viewing to penetrate into my gallery experience. Sometimes I just want to enjoy the art, you know? Color me a purist.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a colleague about this idea and he matter-of-factly said, “Why don’t you just write bookmarking functionality into the app?” And like that, we did. It’s a simple idea, but I think it’s going to be the feature people find the most delightful.

Throughout the development of the CMOA companion app, I realized we were making conscious decisions to omit sexy functionality in favor of truly useable and helpful features. This meant we often pushed the technology to the background, making it a vehicle or an agent instead of a focus point.

I find technology that disappears or recedes into the background — only to reveal itself when called upon — to be some of the most interesting work currently happening in the museum context. There is certainly a well-deserved place for multitouch/kiosk/fixture interactive experiences and focal-point tech in the museum world, but there is also a growing appetite for light-weight, understated, personality-infused gems. I hope those who are hungry for this type of experience find value in projects like the one we just shipped.