I mentioned before that documentary films may offer a better paradigm for ways of presenting scholarly information on the Web rather than the printed book. Webumentary is a rather horrible word and in another posting I’ll explore the use of that word on the net, but for now I want to examine one of the leading studios producing this type of work: Terra Incognita Productions out of Austin, Texas, which uses the more enticing word interactive documentary.

Terra Incognita has done a number of very well produced sites for National Geographic and different museums. See the company’s home page for examples.

Interactive Media Design Review posts an article about the work done to create Becoming Human - which won an award for interactive media design - along with an interview with designer Bart Marable. (Unfortunately, when I last looked at this site on 3/3/05, not all the elements loaded properly).

The article points out how Becoming Human uses a three-tier information architecture of slideshow, exhibits, and resources in a well-organized hypermedia structure: “this site maintains order by organizing itself around the simplest line, keeping it visible at all times and easy to rejoin.”

The article also quotes new media consultant Hillman Curtis: the site is “not overdesigned…in fact, the design does nothing more than properly support and displa the content, which is harder to do than it sounds.”

In the final section of the article’s review of Becoming Human: “Perhaps Becoming Human signals a new link in the evolution of Web media: the advent of the Webumentary.”

The best part of this article is the interview with designer Bart Marable:

“Our central challenge was telling the story to an extremely broad audience…a compelling introduction [was needed]…So we had to find a way to make the story work on multiple levels. Our solution was to develop three distinct but interconnected tiers to the experience. The top tier, which we called the Program level, was designed as a lean-back experience that the visitor could watch like a television documentary. The second tier, called the Exhibit level, was more interactive than the Program, but was richly designed with hands-on activities and strong visuals. And the third tier - the Reference level - was a database-driven reference desk with a glossary, bibliography, and Web site directory. While each tier is distinct, they’re also interconnected. For example, while a visitor is watching the documentary, he might follow a teaser to an exhibit related to the program. The related resources tab also brings up context-sensitive content based on your location.

Marable points out that the project took about 9 months to produce and included a team of 7: director, writers, producer, editor, flash developer, associate producer, technology director….some of the roles overlapped among positons.

Bart Marable himself wrote an engaging article A Walk through an Online Exhbiti that examines the Smithsonian’s African Voices exhibit. Even five years later, the article is still worth reading and very informative about its use of information architecture and design.

Marable points out that Terra Incognita looks to museum exhibits as one of the best models for the Web. Of course, this is nothing new. My own work in 1993 in developing web sites for the Library of Congress followed the exhibit model, which is indeed a very good model.

Marable: “If the designer has done a good job of outlining the site’s information architecture, this navigation zone clearly outlines the scope and organization of the site’s content. Does this mean that the site is also engaging? Not necessarily.”

Marable talks about museum exhibits and tried to mimic their arrangement online in order for users to experience a sense of “unstructured exploration [that] also leads to unexpected discoveries, since visitors are drawn into stories that they might have otherwise overlooked. Our site design needed to incorporate this visual, flowing navigation with an online version of these sight lines.”

Marable has written another article Bringing Stories to Life Online where he talks about using stories to bring content to life. This article talks about a project for National Geographic called At the Tomb of Tutankhamen. Marable writes “We sometimes find it helpful to develop a back story…to tie together a site’s creative approach.”

While Web design often resemble the printed page, Marable believes that “it’s helpful to think of the Web as a 4D story space. Designers …[can] control the timing and pace of the story. Structuring this story space is crucial for bringing an interactive story to life.”

Marable also provides in a sidebar to this article an interesting technique for stimulating motion.

A more in-depth article by Marable on these and other projects is in a paper he prepared for the Museums and the Web 2004 conference: Experience, learning, and Research: Coordinating the Multiple Roles of On-line Exhibitions