If I could choose someone from all of history to have a beer with, Richard Feynman would be on my short list. Books and audio recordings of his physics lectures have sold like crazy, even more among enthusiasts than as textbooks. He makes physics concepts approachable and even fun in singular, inimitable way. His memorable personality and antics are almost as well known. Bill Gates feels the same way; it’s what led him to acquire some of Feynman’s lectures.

So, when Microsoft Research asked us to create an innovative experience centered on a previously unreleased video-recorded lecture series, we jumped at the chance to work on it. Now, Project Tuva is available to the world.

As we watched these lectures for the first time we knew it was important to think of the kind of tasks unique to content so rich with ideas. We worked with an enthusiastic Microsoft Research team to develop an understanding of who could benefit from the site. After brainstorming and narrowing to an innovative feature set, we developed an information architecture and then a working Silverlight prototype illustrating what it would be like. We’re happy to see that the folks at Stimulant refined these ideas and built a great-looking experience that also performs well.

The content of Feynman’s seven Messenger Lectures lent itself to many outside learning resources we called Extras, like the one shown above. They’re cued by the content of the lecture. Some of them even update his slides of astronomical objects with interactive imagery and tours in WorldWide Telescope (another of our Microsoft Research projects that recently won an award). Focusing on teachers, students, and enthusiasts led to several other cool features:

Quickly find what you need:

• Search over multiple video transcripts
• Chaptered playhead navigation
• Unique visual timeline
• Time-synched video for search results, extras, and your own notes

Don’t just watch, understand:

• Transcript synchronized to video playback
• Interactive Extras expand on concepts from the video
• Time-stamped note taking
• Go fullscreen to watch without distraction

We also designed a cool set of community authoring tools and sharing capabilities.

Take a look! His teaching style is captivating and it’s fascinating how well the lectures still capture modern physics after all these years.

P.S. In case you’re wondering, Tuva is an area in central Asia, then part of the USSR, that Feynman aspired to visit for years. He died of cancer before the visa arrived.

[Update: blogs and news sites have picked up the story. Like this post from PC Pro:

"Also superb is that whenever Feynman mentions a constellation or spatial anomaly a link will take you to Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope so you can go and take a look for yourself. It’s so brilliantly designed and wonderfully implemented it’s quite obviously a labour of love. It’s also precisely how I want to see historical information presented and updated."

Glad you like it!]