11,274 research outputs found
Supporting place-specific interaction through a physical/digital assembly
This article examines visitor interactions with and through a physical/digital installation designed for an open-air museum that displays historic buildings and ways of life from the past. The installation was designed following the “Assembly” design scheme proposed by Fraser et al. (2003), and centred around five principles for the design of interactive experiences. We discuss how the Assembly framework was adapted and applied to our work on the installation called Reminisce, and we then present qualitative data gathered through the shadowing and naturalistic observations of small groups of visitors using Reminisce during their exploration of the museum. Through these data excerpts we illustrate how interaction occurred among visitors and with the assembly. We reflect on the guiding principles of the adapted Assembly framework and on their usefulness for the design of place-specific interactional opportunities in heritage settings. Results from the empirical study show that the adapted Assembly principles provide HCI researchers and designers with ways in which to flexibly support collocated interactions at heritage sites across artefacts and locations in ways that both complement and enrich the physical setting of the visit and its character
Treasure codes: augmenting learning from physical museum exhibits through treasure hunting
Previous studies have highlighted the difficulty that designers face in creating mobile museum guides to enhance small group experiences. In this paper, we report a study exploring the potential of mobile visual recognition technology (Artcodes) to improve users’ experiences in a visitor centre. A prototype mobile guide in the form of a treasure hunt was developed and evaluated by means of a field study comparing this technology with the existing personal guided tour. The results reveal a preference for the mobile guide amongst participants and show significant learning gains from pre-test to post-test compared with the pre-existing personal tour. Our observational analyses indicate how the mobile guide can be used to improve visitors’ learning experiences by supporting active discovery and by balancing physical and digital interactions. We further expand the concept of design trajectories to consider micro-scaffolding as a way of understanding and designing future public technologies
Designing Hybrid Gifts
Hybrid gifting combines physical artefacts and experiences with digital interactivity to generate new kinds of gifts. Our review details how gifting is a complex social phenomenon and how digital gifting is less engaging than physical gifting for both givers and receivers. Employing a Research Through Design approach, we developed a portfolio of four hybrid gifting experiences: an augmented advent calendar; edible music tracks; personalised museum tours; and a narrated city walk. Our reflection addresses three concepts: hybrid wrapping where physical gifts become wrapped in digital media and vice versa; the importance of effortful interactions that are visible and pleasurable; and the need to consider social obligation, including opportunities for acknowledgement and reciprocation, dealing with embarrassment, and recognising the distinction between giving and sharing. Our concepts provide guidance to practitioners who wish to design future gifting experiences while helping HCI researchers engage with the concept of gifting in a nuanced way
Designing Museums for Participation, Collaboration and Social Interaction
This thesis documents the design and development of novel interactive experiences that explored concepts aimed to enhance the visitor experience to Cork Butter Museum, Cork, Ireland.
The context to the work is that in recent years, museums and cultural institutions are increasingly motivated to apply creative strategies to engage visitors who come for recreational, social and sometimes educative purposes. Novel museum exhibits designed to cater for such needs often involves the integration of new media technologies in response to rising expectations visitors have with regards to being actively engaged during their visit. This often requires a higher level of participation than reading text or looking at artefacts from a controlled distance.
Researchers have explored transforming the visitor experience through a wide range of projects in the fields of embodied interaction and experience design, which might be regarded as emerging subfields of research practice in HCI. Recent approaches to the design of public exhibition spaces have often made use of widely available input/output sensing technologies which support alternative strategies for the creation of novel interfaces and delivery of dynamic content.
In light of such developments, the aim of this work was to explore the design of engaging experiences that would facilitate participation, collaboration and social interaction in a museum through the creation of technologically augmented artefacts. From the outset, a principle of the research was to ensure that any interventions were sensitive to and respected the natural aesthetic of the museum environment.
Aims and objectives that were suitable for the research were first identified through design research, out of which a set of design principles that were specific to the museum emerged.Authentic artefacts which were suitable for the creation of novel experiences were identified and transformed over the course of an iterative design and development cycle. They were then brought into the museum for a case study, and their effects were analysed and discussed. The process, methods, and findings that were uncovered over the course of the research will be described in the thesis
Proceedings of the International Workshop “Re-Thinking Technology in Museums: towards a new understanding of people’s experience in museums"
Proceedings of the International Workshop “Re-Thinking Technology in Museums: towards a new understanding of people’s experience in museums
We Dare You: A Lifecycle Study of a Substitutional Reality Installation in a Museum Space
In this article, we present a lifecycle study of We Dare You, a
Substitutional Reality (SR) installation that combines visual and tactile
stimuli. The installation is set up in a center for architecture, and invites
visitors to explore its facade while playing with vertigo, in a visual Virtual
Reality (VR) environment that replicates the surrounding physical space of the
installation. Drawing on an ethnographic approach, including observations and
interviews, we researched the exhibit from its opening, through the initial
months plagued by technical problems, its subsequent success as a social and
playful installation, on to its closure, due to COVID-19, and its subsequent
reopening. Our findings explore the challenges caused by both the hybrid nature
of the installation, as well as the visitor' playful use of the installation
which made the experience social and performative - but also caused some
problems. We also discuss the problems We Dare You faced in light of hygiene
demands due to COVID-19. The analysis contrasts the design processes and
expectations of stakeholders with the audience's playful appropriation, which
led the stakeholders to see the installation as both a success and a failure.
Evaluating the design and redesign through use on behalf of visitors, we argue
that an approach that further opens up the post-production experience to a
process of continuous redesign based on the user input - what has been termed
"design-after-design" - could facilitate the design of similar experiences in
the museum and heritage sector, supporting a participatory agenda in the design
process, and helping to resolve the tension between stakeholders' expectations
and visitors' playful appropriations.Comment: Accepted to be published in the Journal on Computing and Cultural
Heritage (JOCCH
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Bare nothingness: Situated subjects in embodied artists' systems
This chapter examines the current state of digital artworks, arguing that they have not yet made a groundbreaking impact on the cultural landscape of the 21st century and suggesting that a reason for this lack of notoriety is the obsolete model of agency deployed by many digital artists. As an alternative to what is framed as out-of-date forms of interactivity, the chapter highlights evolving research into interactive systems, artists' tools, applications, and techniques that will provide readers with an insightful and up-to-date examination of emerging multimedia technology trends. In particular, the chapter looks at situated computing and embodied systems, in which context-aware models of human subjects can be combined with sensor technology to expand the agencies at play in interactive works. The chapter connects these technologies to Big Data, Crowdsourcing and other techniques from artificial intelligence that expand our understanding of interaction and participation
Narrative environments: how do they matter?
The significance and possible senses of the phrase 'narrative environment' are explored. It is argued that 'narrative environment' is not only polysemous but also paradoxical; not only representational but also performative; and not just performatively repetitive but also reflexive and constitutive. As such, it is useful for understanding the world of the early 21st century. Thus, while the phrase narrative environment can be used to denote highly capitalised, highly regulated corporate forms, i.e. "brandscapes", it can also be understood as a metaphor for the emerging reflexive knowledge-work-places in the ouroboric, paradoxical economies of the 21st century. Narrative environments are the media and the materialities through which we come to comprehend that world and to act in those economies. Narrative environments are therefore, sophistically, performative-representative both of the corporate dominance of life worlds and of the undoing of that dominance, through the iterative responses to the paradoxical injunction: "learn to live"
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