Multisensory interactive storytelling to augment the visit of a historical house museum

We present an interactive and multisensory intervention designed for a house museum. Digital technology holds great potential for such heritage sites, but current use is limited to the pre- and post-visit experience. Interviews with museum professionals highlighted their concerns about technology placed in historic houses and suggested four design principles that we used to carefully integrate interactive technology, and the value of a bespoke installation. The installation, the Interactive Tableaux, shows a novel use of digital interactive storytelling where we combined both tangible qualities and informational aspects while respecting the aesthetic of the house and its home feeling. We discuss the process of crafting a conversation in and with a particular place and present evidence from our evaluations that the interactive multisensory installation encouraged observation, reflection and conversation

Crafting Critical Heritage Discourses into Interactive Exhibition Design

This paper argues how a more reflective design practice that embraces critical discourses can transform interactive exhibition design and therefore the museum visiting experience. Four framing arguments underpin our exhibition design making: the value of materiality, visiting as an aesthetic experience, challenging the authorized voice, and heritage as a process. These arguments were embodied through design, art and craft practice into one interactive exhibition at a house museum. We draw from our design process discussing the implications that adopting an approach informed by critical heritage debates has on exhibition design and suggest three sensitizing concepts (polyvocal narratives, dialogical interaction, interweaving time and space) bridging the practice of interactive exhibition design and critical heritage theory

The Diary of Niels: Affective engagement through tangible interaction with museum artifacts

This paper presents a research through design exploration using tangible interactions in order to seamlessly integrate technology in a historical house museum. The study addresses a longstanding concern in museum exhibition design that interactive technologies may distract from the artifacts on display. Through an iterative design process including user studies, a co-creation workshop with museum staff and several prototypes, we developed an interactive installation called The Diary of Niels that combines physical objects, RFID sensors and an elaborate fiction in order to facilitate increased visitor engagement. Insights from the research process and user tests indicate that the integration of technology and artifacts is meaningful and engaging for users, and helps introduce museum visitors to the historic theme of the exhibition and the meaning of the artifacts. The study also points to continued challenges in integrating such hybrid experiences fully with the rest of the exhibition.Comment: Conference: EuroMed 202

Getting attention for a ceramic art exhibition: A Case study of a nonprofit’s promotional campaign

A participant-observation case study of a promotional campaign developed and implemented for a temporary, nonprofit ceramic art exhibition. The subject is introduced through a review of both theoretical and practical research examples centered on marketing and public relations for arts and cultural attractions. The present study offers a descriptive and evaluative analysis of the campaign\u27s promotional strategies and tactics. Strategies discussed include promotional objectives, prospective audiences, assessment of available resources, and scheduling and implementation. The tactics include direct mail and email delivery of press releases, promotional materials, and the use of social media. Findings demonstrate that publicity generated primarily was derived from a combination of personalized email communications and timely, unique press releases

Towards Engaging Intangible Holographic Public Displays

Public displays are some of the most challenging interfaces to design because of two key characteristics. First, the experience should be engaging, to attract and maintain users’ attention. Second, the interaction with the display should be natural, meaning that users should be able to receive the desired output with little or no training. Holographic displays are increasingly popular in public spaces such as museums and concert halls but there is little published research on users’ experiences with such displays. Previous research has suggested both tangible and intangible inputs as engaging and natural options for holographic displays, but there is no conclusive evidence on their relative merits. Hence, we run a study to investigate the user experience with a holographic display comparing the level of engagement and feeling of natural experience in the interacting process. We used a mix of surveys, interviews, video recordings, and task-based metrics to measure users’ performance on a specific task, the perceived usability, and levels of engagement and satisfaction. Our findings suggest that a tangible input was reported as more natural than the intangible one, however, both tangible and intangible inputs were found to be equally engaging. The latter findings contribute to the efforts of designing intangible public holographic displays and other interactive systems that take into consideration health safety issues, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic era in which contamination can be established with tangible and physical interaction between users and public displays, yet without affecting the level of engagement compared to the tangible experience

Crafting the City : Promoting Heritage Awareness Through Craft Making in a Historical Town

This paper reports on a project designed to promote the understanding of the World Heritage site of Old Rauma, Finland, with the help of craft activities. Through fieldwork and an analysis of the data collected from two craft interventions, the paper examines how craft making can serve as a medium to celebrate a sense of place and inspire people to deliberate the role that heritage occupies in their everyday lives. Based on the study, it can be concluded that attention needs to be placed on the teaching and learning of creative practices in order to contribute to the makers’ perceptions of placeness and to sustain local development as well as to promote heritage in a historical town.This paper reports on a project designed to promote the understanding of the World Heritage site of Old Rauma, Finland, with the help of craft activities. Through fieldwork and an analysis of the data collected from two craft interventions, the paper examines how craft making can serve as a medium to celebrate a sense of place and inspire people to deliberate the role that heritage occupies in their everyday lives. Based on the study, it can be concluded that attention needs to be placed on the teaching and learning of creative practices in order to contribute to the makers’ perceptions of placeness and to sustain local development as well as to promote heritage in a historical town.Peer reviewe

Towards Engaging Intangible Holographic Public Displays

Public displays are some of the most challenging interfaces to design because of two key characteristics. First, the experience should be engaging, to attract and maintain users’ attention. Second, the interaction with the display should be natural, meaning that users should be able to receive the desired output with little or no training. Holographic displays are increasingly popular in public spaces such as museums and concert halls but there is little published research on users’ experiences with such displays. Previous research has suggested both tangible and intangible inputs as engaging and natural options for holographic displays, but there is no conclusive evidence on their relative merits. Hence, we run a study to investigate the user experience with a holographic display comparing the level of engagement and feeling of natural experience in the interacting process. We used a mix of surveys, interviews, video recordings, and task-based metrics to measure users’ performance on a specific task, the perceived usability, and levels of engagement and satisfaction. Our findings suggest that a tangible input was reported as more natural than the intangible one, however, both tangible and intangible inputs were found to be equally engaging. The latter findings contribute to the efforts of designing intangible public holographic displays and other interactive systems that take into consideration health safety issues, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic era in which contamination can be established with tangible and physical interaction between users and public displays, yet without affecting the level of engagement compared to the tangible experience

Hybrid Museum Experiences

"So you’re the one getting this gift? Lucky you! Someone who knows you has visited the museum. They searched out things they thought you would care about, and they took photos and left messages for you.” This is the welcoming message for the Gift app, designed to create a very personal museum visit. Hybrid Museum Experiences use new technologies to augment, expand or alter the physical experience of visiting the museum. They are designed to be experienced in close relation to the physical space and exhibit. In this book we discuss three forms of hybridity in museum experiences: incorporating the digital and the physical, creating social, yet personal and intimate experiences, and exploring ways to balance visitor participation and museum curation. The book reports on a three-year cross-disciplinary research project in which artists, design researchers and museum professionals have collaborated to create technology-mediated experiences that merge with the museum environment