"The Interactive Screens have engaged people in a way that is very new and different for The Music Center. It’s more than just providing information, it humanizes and makes accessible a place that people didn’t always feel was accessible by putting a human face to it."
Howard Sherman
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer,
The Music Center Ops.
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In 2019 The Music Center, one of the largest performing art centers in the United States, partnered with Beaudry Interactive, an award winning experiential design firm, to solve the problem of how to welcome guests to the renovated Music Center Plaza without a staff presence.
Together we created The Plaza Interactive Wayfinding Screens Located in the Lisa Specht Welcome Center.
A NEW TOOL FOR THE MUSIC CENTER
“We wanted to create a highly interactive, visually inspired experience for the guests. Traditional html would not suffice. At its core is a sophisticated interactive programming environment traditionally reserved for live performance and themed entertainment. This gave us the ability to create highly functional interfaces that are media-rich and visually stunning, inviting guests to actively engage with the content.”
David Beaudry
Interaction Design & Software Development,
Beaudry Interactive
KEY FEATURES
Interface Design integrated into and influenced by The Music Center’s rich visual brand.
Unique UI based on virtual spinning wheels that lets visitors explore multiple pathways – portals – into The Music Center’s past, present, and future, while engaging TMC’s diverse audience of all ages and cultures.
Content fully curated by The Music Center’s marketing and communication team.
This is an active experience. Regardless of whether you are engaging with the wayfinding screens on the sides through touch, or the more long-form media content in the center screen through proximity, the guest is always in control, curating their own experience.
It’s not a website.
Location, location, location. Attention is given to where the screens live. The screens aren’t the destination, they are a waypoint. Content is easy to get to, quickly digestible, and encourages visitors to explore the physical space around them – the real destination.
System scalable to expand across TMC’s multiple venues, the Plaza, and neighboring parks.
“It’s more than what’s happening at The Music Center, it contextualizes it.”
Howard Sherman
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer,
The Music Center Ops.
THE FIFTH VENUE
The Music Center of Los Angeles is the city’s premiere destination for performing arts.
The campus is home to world-class venues including The Ahmanson Theater, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Mark Taper Forum, and The Walt Disney Concert Hall.
In 2017, The Music Center
began a 20-month $41 million-dollar renovation of the campus’s Plaza to transform the space into a community destination for Angelenos to enjoy, connect, and discover the rich cultural and arts programming The Music Center has to offer.
A Plaza for All.
“This was really not much of a place before, it was a foyer to all these great facilities. It was a beautiful foyer, but it wasn’t a place that you would come to on its own.”
-Bob Hale, Rios Clemente
Plaza Renovation Architect
The Los Angeles Times, Aug. 22nd, 2019
Wayfinding,
and so much more.
There are 5 portals for exploration, coupled a unique UI (spinning wheels) that lets users explore multiple portals at the same time without losing their place.
The spinning wheels not only provide multiple pathways (portals) into The Music Center’s brand and story, they give the guest the ability to align content appropriate for their height and physical reach.
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OUR STORY: explores the storied past, present, and future of The Music Center
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EXPLORE: interactive maps and general information
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EVENTS: hundreds of events available at your fingertips
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COMMUNITY: the amazing people that are part of the Los Angeles art & performing arts community
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EATS + TREATS: find just the right thing to satisfy your cravings
The Plaza Interactive Screens
are part Concierge
Lets you know
what’s happening at TMC
...and where to discover
fun places to eat
Hover on EVENTS image to learn more.
But most of all, the screens tell a story.
Hover on each image to learn more.
Exploring the five unique portals of the interactive wayfinding screens, guests learn about the storied past, present, and future of The Music Center and the vibrant community of artists The Music Center brings together from all over the globe.
The screens celebrate The Music Center’s mission to deepen the cultural lives of Angelenos.
DESIGN APPROACH
The UX design for the interactive screens was inspired by The Music Center’s rich visual brand. Beaudry Interactive successfully extended TMC’s brand identity into this new communication tool through careful study of everything from TMC’s existing tool kits, from the brand’s marketing and communication collateral to the physical design language of the historic buildings, lobbies, and architectural details found throughout the campus and surrounding environments. The final design, a modular rectangular motif, reflects the design of the exterior windows of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the first and largest theater of The Music Center, designed and built in 1964 by architect Welton Becket. This design, carried throughout the theater’s fixtures, interior finishes, and across other spaces throughout the campus, grounds the Interactive Wayfinding Screens in their home on The Music Center’s Plaza.
ACCESSIBLE TO ALL
The design challenge for the Interactive Screens was to create a UX experience to meet the needs of The Music Center’s diverse audience, which includes patrons, families, and friends of all ages and cultures. The UI design takes into account multiple UX factors like height differences, ADA accessibility and reading comprehension. The decision to design the interactive portals to scroll vertically was in an effort to remediate barriers based on reach and height, so every guest can move the UI menu to a comfortable reach range and access navigational tools to enjoy the screen’s content.
Another aspect that allows the screens to reach a wider audience of Plaza visitors is the multilanguage capabilities built into the CMS. With a simple toggle, guests can view the interactive screen content and UI in their preferred language.
FRONT AND
CENTER
Unlike the outer screens, which respond to users’ touch and provide an opportunity for a deeper informational dive, the center screen contains more cinematic and media-rich content and is activated by visitors’ presence as they approach the screen. The result is an invitation for guests to explore and engage with a fascinating library of videos and dynamic information about the venues that surround the Plaza.
CAMPUS WIDE
CONTENT MANAGEMENT
From hundreds of events across four Resident Companies and 5 venues, to seasonally changing menus and an ever-growing timeline of historical milestones, The Music Center required a robust and dynamic tool for managing this deep repository of content. To solve for this, Beaudry Interactive built a custom Content Management System that allows The Music Center staff to seamlessly curate and push updated content to screens across the campus as soon as it becomes available.
The Interactive Wayfinding Screens can be found at the Lisa Specht Welcome Center and the Walt Disney Concert Hall lobby.
“The point of the redone plaza was that it was a plaza for everybody, that it’s accessible, and a place to gather not just pre and post-performance, but as a community gathering space.
The interactive screens did two things, they gave directional signage and information about what’s happening at The Music Center but it also created an interactive environment that was accessible, fun, and easy to use—in a way that people wouldn’t expect.”
Howard Sherman
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer,
The Music Center Ops.
The Music Center
(Core Team)
Project Owner,
Creative Oversight
Howard Sherman
Josephine Ramirez
Bonnie Goodman
Carolyn Van Brunt
Ming Ng
Lisa Ducore
Melissa Tan
Jason Clark
Nick Schwartz-Hall
Aaron Slavin
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer,
The Music Center Ops.
Executive Vice President, The Music Center Arts
Senior Vice President, Marketing & Communications
Vice President, Guest Relations
Vice President, Community Engagement
Assistant Vice President, Marketing and Brand Communications
Assistant Vice President, Ticketing and Marketing Strategy
Director, Production
Senior Producer
Project Manager
Beaudry Interactive
(Core Team)
Designer
& Producer
David Beaudry
Valeria Beaudry
Tim Pike
Mike Segawa
Dominique Sheth
John Manos
Interaction Design & Software Development
Principal-in-charge
Systems Design & Delivery
Art Direction & Visual Experience Design
Producer
Visual Experience Design - Intern