fbpx World Theatre Map | HowlRound Theatre Commons

World Theatre Map

Open Development Update # 2

HowlRound and its online community are designing and building the World Theatre Map which will launch its first version this year, incorporating users' feedback and ideas in iterative phases. This blog series is a development mechanism for users to stay informed of progress and contribute their ideas. Sign up for the Map's mailing list, follow @HowlRound on Twitter, or email [email protected] to get involved. Communicate your thoughts in the comments section below.

The end of February 2016 marked the completion of the initial design phase with graphic designer Renessa Ciampa. Renessa produced several drafts of high-resolution image mockups of all the main pages for the World Theatre Map website.  

These mockups helped our team think through hundreds of details about what valuable information needs to appear in various places, how users will interact with the pages, and how the web developers will engineer the backend and database for the site.

The next phase in the World Theatre Map's development will be thinking through and simultaneously building the data forms that users will use to get information into the Map. This phase will probably be the trickiest for us because of the need to honor and balance the enormous diversity of theatre practice—with its idiosyncratic definitions, ideas of authorship and roles, and various taxonomies—with the need to be able to group certain bits of information in order to create a highly searchable and analyzable directory of the world's theatre communities. 

Here is a sampling of the latest and final mockups:

Homepage. The globe here will be animated, bouncing from one event to another. This is the global, real-time snapshot or "mission control" view of what's happening today around the world in terms of theatre performances—all user-generated information, and in an open-access system of data collection. 
Person Profile Page: A "living CV." Any person involved in some way in theatre will be able to make a profile page or have a page made for them. The side box shows organizations related to the person.
Organization, Company, or Institution Page: "A living CV." The side box show people and other organizations related to this organization. Correction: The "events" listed here will actually show "show titles" with "events" one layer underneath—just like the Person Profile Page.  
Show Profile Page. This page will aggregrate all the events associated with a particular show—including media such as a Map visualization of its tour, photos, and videos. 
Event Page. About a specific event (either a production or a development event) of a particular show. 
Keyword or Filtered Search. Charts and graphs illustrating the search. 
Gallery of charts, graphs, and map visualizations that users have created by using the Search and Filter feature. 

Sign up for the Map's mailing list, follow @HowlRound on Twitter, or email [email protected] to get involved. Communicate your thoughts here in the comments section.

Bookmark this page

Log in to add a bookmark

Comments

1
Add Comment

The article is just the start of the conversation—we want to know what you think about this subject, too! HowlRound is a space for knowledge-sharing, and we welcome spirited, thoughtful, and on-topic dialogue. Find our full comments policy here

Newest First