Designing appliances for mobile commerce and retailtainment

In the emerging world of the new consumer and the `anytime, anywhere' mobile commerce, appliances are located at the collision point of the retailer and consumer agendas. The consequence of this is twofold: on the one hand appliances that were previously considered plain and utilitarian become entertainment devices and on the other, for the effective design of consumer appliances it becomes paramount to employ multidisciplinary expertise. In this paper, we discuss consumer perceptions of a retailtainment commerce system developed in collaboration between interactivity designers, information systems engineers, hardware and application developers, marketing strategists, product development teams, social scientists and retail professionals. We discuss the approached employed for the design of the consumer experience and its implications for appliance design

Co-creating sustainable food futures with botanical gardens and communities: reflections from the BigPicnic project

This article addresses the potential of participatory approaches and processes of co-creation in the context of botanical gardens. It examines how such approaches can not only help cultural heritage sector organisations to engage with different members of their public, but also how they can work with their communities to tackle globally significant societal and environmental goals. Drawing on research conducted for the EU-funded BigPicnic project, this article examines the methodological processes employed by a large consortium of botanical gardens and presents some examples of exhibitions and science cafés that attempted to both highlight issues of food security and sustainability and foster forms of knowledge that go beyond the dichotomy between experts and non-experts. A critical overview of the outcomes of this project serves to outline the potential of co-creation for promoting sustainable food futures

Visitors' Interpretive Strategies at Wolverhampton Art Gallery

Making Meaning in Art Museums is one of two research projects on the theme of art museums and interpretive communities. The first was published as Making Meaning 1:Visitors' Interpretive Strategies at Wolverhampton Art Gallery (RCMG 2001). Making Meaning in Art Museums 2 is the second of two research projects on the theme of art museums and interpretive communities. The Long Gallery at the Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery was selected as the research site for this second study. Both studies have explored the ways in which visitors talked about their experience of a visit to the art museum-both what they said about the paintings and the whole of the visit.The research questions on which this project is based are: What interpretive strategies and repertories are deployed by art museum visitors? Can distinct interpretive communities be identified? What are the implications for the communication policies within art museums? This research is an ethnographic study, using qualitative methods.This research project was funded through a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Boar

Knowledge management for collaborative exhibition development

Museums increasingly develop exhibitions through collaboratives, a trend that demands the investigation of novel ways to facilitate the exchange of ideas and the documentation of knowledge gained. Current knowledge management technologies and tools can support such cross-organisational activities, yet they are limited in that they do not adequately cater for the particular requirements of this activity. In this article we show how the Mirror Knowledge Management System (MKMS), specifically designed to support collaborative exhibition development around a three-dimensional web-based environment founded upon the communities of practice concept, can facilitate geographically distributed collaboration and advance exhibition development practice. Through user studies we identify the key elements of the MKMS that add value to face-to-face interaction or enhance existing collaborative exhibition development practices. Moreover, we show how the MKMS supports professional development and on-the-job training, both recognised as highly desirable features in this setting. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

The social ecology of food: where agroecology and heritage meet

The current food system is unsustainable and no longer able to cope with the challenges caused by climate change and consumer behaviours. In this context, agroecology, with its commitment to crossing disciplinary boundaries, has been endorsed as one of the main approaches to the creation of a sustainable food system. Despite this, the integration of the social research on food has not been evident enough in agroecology as a discipline. To be sure, studies related to foodways, food traditions, and, more recently, food heritage have long been present, and have provided important insights into the social and cultural aspects of food. However, there appears to be little convergence between this body of research and the mainstream agroecology literature. This paper aims to address this disconnection between the sociocultural and environmental aspects of the food system, and to propose ways of moving forward. We argue that knowledge about food heritage can be a catalyst for the achievement of agroecology’s vision for whole-system transformative change, and a moving towards global food security and nutrition. Using the agroecology framework of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and looking at the examples of the subak system in Indonesia and the EU-funded BigPicnic project, we employ the elements of ‘co-creation and sharing of knowledge’, ‘culture and food traditions’ and ‘human and social values’ as entry points for the creation of sustainable transitions of the food and agricultural systems

The Building Bridges Research Project at the London Science Museum: Using an Ethnographic Approach with Under-Represented Visitor Groups

This research is based on the London Science Museum’s ‘Building Bridges’ programme, which consists of a structured sequence of activities for Year Seven secondary school pupils (aged 11–12) and their families. The overall programme aim is to provide links between science at school, at the Science Museum, and as part of every-day family life. The activities occur over the duration of one academic year, and take place at the Museum, at school and at home. They include professional development courses for teachers, outreach visits to schools, visits by school groups to the Science Museum, and a family event. The research presented here is a collaboration between the UCL Institute of Archaeology and the Science Museum, and focuses on families from under-represented visitor groups whose child members are part of the ‘Building Bridges’ programme. Previous insights have highlighted that families visiting the Science Museum come from a narrow demographic profile, with those from minority ethnic backgrounds and from low socio-economic statuses consistently being under-represented (DBIS 2014). The research focus on under-represented visitors is important as the Science Museum seeks to inspire, engage and motivate the widest possible audience about science (NMSI 2009). The limited existing research on under-represented visitors, including families, has taken a predominantly museum-centred approach which often focuses on what families lack as a way to explain why they do not visit museums (Dawson 2014). Instead, this study takes a family-centred approach and focuses on the ‘hidden’ resources families have and how the Museum can tap into these. Indeed, findings from this research reveal the range of activities that families participate in, and the interests and aspirations that they have

Examining the Effect of Visitor Motivation on Observed Visit Strategies Using Mobile Computer Technologies

This article examines the interaction between visitor motivation and in-museum visitor behavior. The authors postulate that, in order to understand this aspect of the dynamics of museum visiting, we need to view the motivations to visit the museum as lists compiled by individual visitors but also as part of wider lists of reasons for visiting that exist in society-which they refer to as cultural itineraries. Self-report methods have been used to capture patterns of motivation that emerge across the data, which in this case were used to examine their relation to visit strategies as manifested by visitor pathways through the London Zoo. Visitor pathways were captured through the novel use of mobile location-sensing technology which offers distinct opportunities in this context that have been unexplored in audience research. The combination of standard research methodology and automated location tracking used in this study allowed us to indentify two distinct visit strategies that directly relate to social groupings with different motivations: (a) groups with an education/participation motivation, who visit exhibits only, and (b) groups with a social event motivation, who spend a considerable amount of time on nonexhibit related activities and socializing with other family members and friends. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Discussions about Home and Identity at a Social History Museum

Despite an increased interest in how societies produce, present and interpret the past, empirical studies of how people make sense of and use the past in their everyday life are less common in public history. Using the museum and the home as a social, cultural and physical setting, this paper explores how people use material culture to make sense of their recent past by (re)constructing personal, family and community histories both in museum exhibitions and through everyday engagements at home. We use two case studies: The West Indian Front Room – Memories and Impressions of Black British Homes exhibition at the Geffrey Museum, London and the home of six families of Albanian heritage in Athens, Greece. In both cases, objects play a key role in mediating and reflecting identity and meaning-making