Matt
Kelsh

Melbourne, Australia

I worked on

Decoded: Australian Signals Directorate Game

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National Museum of Australia, Canberra

The Decoded Game was part of the Decoded exhibit in the National Museum of Australia. The exhibition explored the exploits and achievements of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), from its origins in the Second World War to cyber challenges today.

The Game's premise is:

Two to five people collaborate on touchscreens, working against the clock to resolve missions based on real events—such as saving Australia's missile defence system plans and preventing a ransomware attack on a hospital.

— Jamie Hogue, Project Director

The game includes video cut scenes that immerse players in the wider cybersecurity narrative.





Each player is issued a task. Each task requires two specific tools to complete it. The tools are distributed and shared between players. Players need to verbally request the tools from their team mates, who will need to send them over so they can be used. Once a task is complete, a new one is issued. If enough tasks are completed before the time runs out, the mission is a success.

After each mission completes, scenario video is played on the larger screen for the team.

Neat stuff

• Like real life, the game has interruptions – mini games – that players must quickly complete to get back to work. In one interruption the player is running low on energy and needs to take a coffee break.

My Contribution

I contributed the game design, game logic, and interface. This was a team effort, and I enjoyed collaborating with engineers, videographers and the Australian Signals Directorate staff themselves while putting this together.



Result



Decoded exhibit at the National Museum of Australia YouTube MUSE Creative Awards 2023 Gold Winner Art Processors

The Getty Guide

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The Getty Museum, California

The Getty Guide is the official app of the Getty Museum. It enables visitors to explore artworks one at a time by typing in an art ID number, or by selecting a tour, and enjoying a playlist of artworks with directions in between.



Challenges

A design goal of The Getty Guide was to deliver competing experiences as one. On one hand, it needed to be a distraction-free, immersive audio narration device. On the other hand, it needed to be an everything app; a directory for the Getty Museum itself. To remedy this, we matched Getty branding throughout the main interface, and fell back to focused & minimal dark mode while using the audio player.

We had analytics on hand that indicated that two thirds of visitors never used the audio progress indicator to skip around an audio track, which makes a lot of sense considering the immersive content. Of the one third who did interact, ninety seven percent used it to skip back less than ten seconds. This indicated to me that this type of app doesn't need a progress bar like a music player does. I collapsed the progress bar behind a circular progress button, and offered the same UX when a visitor would tap the volume button. This tested really well, and helped save some precious vertical space on the small iPod Touch display.

Neat stuff

• The two-tone visual style of the header is inspired by Canto VIII by Barnett Newman, which was on display in the Getty Museum at the time.
• The Getty Guide featured a pdf-based multi-level map. Visitors could select levels to find what they were looking for.
• We built an events system into the middle tab, so visitors can see a live "What's on" guide while they were exploring the space.
• The app supports 10 language options with key content in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese

My Contribution

I was the sole designer on this project. I collaborated closely with the Getty team as I planned the interface, styles, and feature set. I would facilitate regular presentations to keep our client updated. My responsibilities included creating wireframes, low and high-fidelity prototypes, establishing typography and colour palettes, and developing a comprehensive design system with assets. Throughout implementation, I worked alongside engineers and assisted with quality assurance testing.

Result

Years later, The Getty Guide is no longer an in-house iPod Touch interface; its available for all mobile devices (including android). The foundations I helped establish in the Getty Guide app are still going strong, which is now past version 3.

getty.edu/visit/app (archived)

My role

I enjoyed being able to think outside the app at Art Processors. Instead of focusing on mobile app delivery, I considered aspects of iOS devices that could be used in novel ways to delight museum visitors. I found that being able to flex iOS and android's accessibility features to be very rewarding.

In my role at Art Processors, I collaborated with client staff, designers, engineers and other team members to deliver projects such as

• Pladia
• MONA
• Australian Sports Museum
• National Museum of Australia
• Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame