We partnered with the design team at the Peabody Essex Museum to make an interactive experience for their wonderful exhibit, Turner & the Sea. The result of our collaboration is the Mood-o-Meter, an engaging web app that asks the user to answer a handful of questions in unique and interesting ways. When finished, they are then prescribed one of Turner’s beautiful watercolor paintings according to the answers they’ve given.
The Mood-o-Meter's introductory view
We encourage you to get your prescription, but we thought it’d be interesting to give an overview of the technology behind the experience.
100% Web
The Mood-o-Meter can be experienced on iPads in the gallery or anywhere in the world thanks to our responsive approach. While the user experience feels like that of a native app, it actually uses the web platform to achieve a rich, touch-based interface.
The Mood-o-Meter's spinnable dial
We chose to make this app with web technology in order to keep costs down and address as many different devices as possible. While we built the experience to take advantage of touch input and other sensors available in mobile phones and tablets, it also works on a garden-variety desktop computer.
Since there are no apps to download, sharing is easier, helping bring more visitors into the gallery and also allowing visitors to take a piece of the exhibit home to share with their friends and family.
Content Management and Reporting
The backend of the Mood-o-Meter was built using the CodeIgniter Framework, which we paired with ExpressionEngine to allow the staff at PEM to easily update the information about each painting.
We also developed a custom module to keep track of visitors’ answers and prescriptions, making it easy for the staff at PEM to understand exactly how people are using the Mood-o-Meter—both in the gallery and out in the wild—in real time.
As each user moves through the diagnosis process, ExpressionEngine keeps track of exactly how long they spend on each question, which selections are made, and where in the world they are accessing the Mood-o-Meter from.
Pie and line charts for the PEM staff
Nothing Like the Real Thing
While we’re quite pleased with what we were able to accomplish, there’s nothing like standing in front of one of Turner’s evocative paintings. This wonderful exhibition is open through .
We’re always on the lookout for fun projects that allow us to do interesting, uncommon things with technology just like this one. If you have something like this in mind, please get in touch. We’d love to work with you.