Welcome to Cooper-Hewitt Labs.

The Labs is a place where you can discover what is going on behind the scenes in digital & emerging media at the Cooper-Hewitt. Now you might well be asking why the Cooper-Hewitt needs another blog – we’ve got the popular design blog on our site already – so here’s why:

It is going to get noisy here. It might even get a bit messy. And that’s the point.

(There’s a reason we have a tanuki as an unofficial mascot for the Labs.)

There’s going to be a lot of technical posts in amongst others that teardown how experiments have performed. And some speculations, ideas, and things we’d like to do, too.

The Cooper-Hewitt is undergoing a transformation with a major rebuilding project. As a result digital content development, digital outreach, and the integration of digital into the fabric and visitor experience of the new building, are all top of mind for us here. This means that there is a lot of experimentation and rapid change, and in the spirit of the broader Smithsonian New Media & Web Strategy, we are going to be doing a lot of ‘thinking aloud’.

We’d love your feedback and input as we go.
Continue reading →