Interactivity

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The Future of Human Rights Foundation

Kira Valera, Adriana Rodriguez, Zeina Muhtadi

kira.valera@gmail.com / adribrodriz@gmail.com / muhtadi.zeina@gmail.com

KEYWORDS

Art Interactivity social justiceuser experiance youth

Project

HRF wants to become the leading source of education about human rights. They are interested in communicating to a wider base, especially the youth. We found that museums and exhibits engage their audience in a more effective way than a classroom environment by enacting two key features: active learning and personal agency. These features combined create an interactive experience for HRF’s audience. Art exhibitions have proven to provide an overwhelmingly positive learning experience for children and adults alike, even online. As we have made the difficult transition to life online, virtual galleries have become wildly successful. We hypothesize that HRF’s initiative Art in Protest would be the best vehicle to educate the youth and increase their audience. An interactive virtual experience would improve their websites and increase user engagement with their content.

challenge

HRF almost exclusively posts about human rights violations. Members of our generation find it tough to digest information about the harsh realities of today’s world. The youth respond to art, so we decided to leverage HRF’s Art in Protest initiative to educate them. When we conducted user journeys through the Art in Protest website, we found that users were disengaged and felt like they were not absorbing the information presented to them. One user told us that it felt like she was “mindlessly scrolling through Instagram” in the viewing room slideshows of artwork. We see great potential in how Art in Protest can be presented to people around the world in a more engaging way while opening new doors for education on human rights. How might we combine personal agency and active learning to create an interactive experience for HRF’s viewers?

Outcome

We created a new and improved interactive viewing gallery for Art in Protest using Kunstmatrix. This platform would allow the foundation to create a streamlined, highly detailed immersive gallery experience to captivate viewers. Artworks from this initiative will be exhibited on the walls of our virtual Mendoza Gallery, named after the founder’s mother to honor her life and commemorate the ongoing fight for human rights. Viewers can walk through at their own pace or be guided through tours. The gallery would be organized by country, accompanied by a description outlining their current situations. Artists would each have their own wall highlighting their work. Active learning and personal agency are both incorporated into the user’s journey. It allows for a more engaging, immersive experience with the swipe of a finger, and it can be applied to all other HRF initiatives. Eventually, their entire website can evolve into an interactive virtual experience.