At the center of the exhibition is a stunning 50-foot timeline that represents the rich interplay between mathematicians, culture, and historical events over the past millennium. In celebration of IBM’s 100th anniversary, my challenge was to reimagine the original timeline for a completely new format—Apple’s very first iPad. The result was the Minds of Modern Mathematics app, a digital experience that allows today’s students, teachers, and avid learners to interact with Charles and Ray Eames’ creation in new and exciting ways.

Inside the app

The default view shows one century of history. Users may swipe horizontally to move forward or back in time.

Swiping down orients users in time by revealing important events unrelated to mathematics.

Pinching allows users to transition from the view of a single century to a view of the entire millennium.

Users may tap a mathematician to learn more about who they were and how they contributed to the field.

Similarly, tapping a cultural artifacts reveals more about it.

While designing the app, it was important for me to think about how an iPad might offer users new ways to experience the original content.  In observing how people interacted with the installation, I noticed something very interesting:  their eyes would typically dart back and forth across the 50-foot wall, focusing only momentarily on the largest or most visually impactful objects before moving on to the next.  In fact, nobody seemed progress through the timeline chronologically and they often ignored any written text altogether.  I had to admit that my own experience mirrored what I saw in others.

It was to clear to me at this point that despite the beauty of Charles and Ray Eames’ creation, it was not very usable.  In fact, it was nearly impossible to absorb all the content and formulate a comprehensive understanding of how mathematics evolved over the millennium. Maybe that was the point, but I doubt it.

I was eager to solve this problem, but I also wanted to preserve the integrity and pay homage to the magnificent artistry of the original.  For this reason, I decided that orienting the iPad to landscape would offer an experience that more or less reproduces the original but in an interactive format, and turning the device to portrait would allow users to view the content in a completely new way: one object at a time, in chronological order.  For the first time in 50 years, audiences could enjoy in the entirety of Eames’ history of mathematics as it unraveled.

Finally, if users want to interact with the original timeline, an ultra-high resolution photograph of the poster version is also included.

An overwhelming quantity of content

In addition to inventorying (and painstakingly photographing) the 495 objects on the timeline, it was also essential to create an ontology of each of the four main object types that were identified and the different permutations of assets associated with every one. I gave the object types names: (1) Mathematicians, (2) Culture artifacts, (3) Historical developments, and (4) Historical events. The result was the following hierarchy:

For each permutation, a template was created. For example, one template was created for Cultural artifacts with an image gallery but no description for each image and another was created for Cultural artifacts with an image gallery that has a description for each image. Every object was assigned a template that accommodates the specific set of assets it includes.

Case study

Results