Design for a mobile learning space
The Museum of Teaching and Learning’s Your Baby’s Amazing Brain brings physical exhibit design into a traveling setting.
Explore the exhibition ↗INDEPENDENT SINCE 1998
Ideas become experiences
through people.
Mad brings design, engineering, software and fabrication together to turn complex ideas into working experiences and systems. Our technology grows from that practical work, and from the people who keep asking how it could be better.
OUR STORY
The work has grown. So has the ambition.
Mad Systems was founded in 1998. Work in museums, visitor centers, attractions and other physical environments brought together sound, audiovisual systems, interactive software and custom physical exhibits. Each project asked the team to connect an idea with the practical details of making it work.
That experience led to new questions: how can equipment be replaced years later? How can every language receive the complete experience? How can a venue respond to different visitors while preserving the designer’s intention?
QuickSilver® and the AV++® family grew from that work. Today, Mad Intelligence™ extends the ambition into continuing engineering, with WorldModel™ providing an architecture for context and governed action and Mad Hatter™ bringing advanced processing and developing spatial capabilities into sound.
Mad is the name bringing this wider work together. Design • Orchestrate • Inspire expresses the way we work: give an idea purpose, bring the capabilities together and create an experience that matters to the people it reaches.
THE TEAM MAKES IT HAPPEN
Expertise, imagination and care.
Maris J. Ensing, Mad’s founder and chief architect, connects design and invention with the company’s work in intelligent physical environments. The continuing development, engineering and integration are a team achievement.
Mad’s engineers, programmers, designers, creatives, technicians and project teams bring their own experience and imagination to every stage. They challenge and refine ideas, solve the difficult practical problems and turn inventions into dependable systems and engaging experiences. Their shared skill, care and commitment are what make Mad’s work possible.
In-house development and fabrication help those disciplines work together. An interface can be prototyped, a physical control built, the software connected and the result tested as an experience. We also work closely with our clients’ designers, architects, fabricators, media producers and delivery teams.
WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE
Different projects call on different strengths.
Software for close exploration
Mad’s Hogwarts Castle Model interactives combine high-resolution imagery with software that lets visitors explore the detail.
Explore the interactives ↗A complete language change
At the Albert Robles Center, all text throughout the center changes between English and Spanish within seconds.
Explore language dignity ↗HOW WE WORK
Start with purpose. Stay close to the result.
Understand the intention
Define what people should see, hear, learn and be able to do, together with the venue’s operating needs.
Design at Mad ↗Test the uncertain parts
Use appropriate prototypes and demonstrations to resolve the interaction, interfaces and engineering.
Engineering at Mad ↗Plan for life after handover
Document the installation, train the team and establish the support and refresh responsibilities.
Support at Mad ↗VISIT WONDERLAND
Bring a question worth exploring.
Our demonstration and development environment in Orange, California can make a project conversation tangible. A focused visit connects your question to relevant working demonstrations, published architecture and capabilities still being developed, with their current scope explained.
LET’S BUILD WHAT COMES NEXT
Let’s work on what comes next.
An early idea, a detailed brief or an existing installation can all be a starting point.
Start a conversation