Date: July 9, 2008
Speaker:
Jen Young & Matt Arnold — Second Story

Interactive presentations in the museum have the institutional goal of promoting forms of social interaction that enrich the visitor experience. To meet these needs, institutions are turning to multi-user, or group, interactive scenarios. Members of Second Story Interactive Studios will show how understanding people’s needs and tendencies—and the learning curve for people that must be managed in multi-user experiences—can be squared with innovations offered by ever-changing technology and hardware, design obstacles and opportunities, and the desire to wow visitors while offering designs that are appropriate to the content.

About the Speakers
Jennifer Young’s role at Second Story is to lead all aspects of projects and serve as the primary liaison between the client and the in-house teams to orchestrate, coordinate, schedule, and manage projects through every phase of development. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from St. Lawrence University, she worked at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where she gained experience in collections management, exhibits, education, and research. Jen recently led the award-winning World War I Museum project in Kansas City, Missouri.

Matt Arnold – With a strong engineering, design, and modeling background, Matt’s contributions to projects include Flash programming, animation, and 3D media development. In addition to providing 2D and 3D visualizations, Matt researches and develops innovative technical and engineering solutions for projects such as the Theban Mapping Project, the Lagoda at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and the World War I Museum. Before coming to Second Story, Matt’s experience has been in the design and research of industrial, mobile, and planetary robotics. Matt has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.