Museomix: lessons learned from an open creative hackathon in museums

International audienceIn the past decades, museums have become places that do not only conserve and store artefacts, but also provide visitors with education and entertainment. They are now challenged to become open, collaborative and creative spaces. In this paper we describe a participative event, involving both visitors and museum actors during a three-day hackathon in order to create digital artefacts for museums, among them tangible experiences. We describe the specific methodology created for the event, based on maker movement and rapid prototyping, and some of the resulting prototypes. Finally we draw the lessons of this experience and the possible implication of this methodology for the context of helping museum staff and visitors to personalize the visit, thanks to tangible user interfaces

Outil de gestion pour la création de parcours de visites personnalisées dans le contexte des musées

Un nombre croissant de musées et d'institutions culturelles tentent de personnaliser les parcours de leurs visiteurs afin de favoriser leur engagement, leur dispenser les informations les plus pertinentes et les inciter à revenir pour revoir les collections sous un autre angle. Cependant, la création des différents parcours est une tâche longue et complexe pour le personnel du musée qui ne dispose pas d'outils appropriés. L'objectif de cette thèse est de proposer un outil explorant la métaphore de l'interaction tangible afin de les aider à gérer cette complexité de leur espace de conception. Nous souhaitons ainsi faciliter la création d'un grand nombre de parcours, tout en préservant un espace de conception créatif.More and more museums and cultural institutions are trying to personalize their visits in order to foster their visitors’ engagement, to provide them with the most relevant information and to encourage them to revisit the collection. However, the creation of the different visits is a long and complex task for the members of the museum staff who do not have the proper tools. The aim of this thesis is to propose a tangible tool to help them manage this complexity of their design space. We wish to ease the creation of a large number of visits, while preserving a creative design space

Letter perception: from item-level ERPs to computational models

ISBN : 978-2-9532965-0-1In the present study, online measures of letter identification were used to test computational models of letter perception. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to letters and pseudo-letters revealing a transition from feature analysis to letter identification in the 100-200 ms time window. Measures indexing this transition were then computed at the level of individual letters. Simulations with several versions of an interactive-activation model of letter perception were fitted with these item-level ERP measures. The results are in favor of a model of letter perception with feedforward excitatory connections from the feature to the letter levels, lateral inhibition at the letter level, and excitatory feedback from the letter to the feature levels

Individualized Visits to Foster the Engagement and the re-visit in Museums

International audienceMuseums have become places that, besides conserving and storing artefacts, provide visitors with education and amusement. They now have to compete with the entertainment industry to attract visitors and expand their audience. The use of digital technology is emerging as a solution.While many studies focus on the visitor side, we are interested in tools for museum staff. To understand their needs and processes, we adopted a participatory and iterative design process, involving museum professionals as end-users at each step (i.e. user observation, design, prototyping, users tests). We conducted 7 meetings, 4 interviews studies and 2 experimental observations with 12 museum experts (communication, IT, public and content experts) from 5 institutions (Exhibition Centres, Science Centre, Archaeological Museum, Museum of Fine Arts).Our analysis revealed two issues faced by these museums. First, despite the recommendation of institutional documents, visitors service is almost never involved before the end of the exhibition design process. Thus, they have no mean to shape the scenography in order to adapt it to visitors. Second, we identified a strong need for encouraging local visitors’ engagement and revisit. Diversifying the visits is a solution considered by museums, but relying on temporary exhibits is too costly for small museums and creating thematic visits is not participatory enough.The creation of individualized visits, allowing visitors to explore existing exhibition on their own depending on their needs and desires, meets both challenges. We thus focus on the design of tools that empower museum professionals to create such visits. We identified that museums need, first, to collect more information about their visitors and, second, to be able to create, evolve and maintain the solutions on their own according to visitors needs. Our aim is to design a tool which respects these two key points and could enable the creation of personalized and dynamic museum visits

Interaction between a bisphosphonate, tiludronate and nanocrystalline apatite: in vitro viability and proliferation of HOP and HBMSC cells

Nanocrystalline apatites (NCA) are the inorganic components of mineralized tissues and they have been recently proposed as biomaterials for drug delivery systems. Bisphosphonates (BPs) are currently the reference drugs used to treat diseases involving bone disorders such as osteoporosis. Nevertheless, the interaction phenomena between BP molecules and apatite nanocrystals of bone are not well understood. Therefore, the adsorption characteristics have been examined and cellular activity of tiludronate molecules on NCA as models of bone mineral has been investigated. Adsorption experiments of tiludronate onto NCA were carried out and revealed a Langmuir-type adsorption isotherm. The uptake of tiludronate molecules is associated with a release of phosphate ions, indicating that the main reaction is an ion exchange process involving surface anions. The results evidence the strong affinity of BP molecules for the apatitic surface. The interactions of NCA-tiludronate associations with human osteoprogenitor cells and human bone marrow stromal cells do not reveal any cytotoxicity and evidence the activity of adsorbed tiludronate molecules. Moreover, an evolution of the physico-chemical characteristics of the apatitic substrate during biological study was observed, highlighting the existence of dynamic interactions. This work contributes to clarifying the reaction mechanisms between BPs and biomimetic apatites

Crystal structure of monoclinic calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate (m-CPPD) involved in inflammatory reactions and osteoarthritis

Pure monoclinic calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate (m-CPPD) has been synthesized and characterized by synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction and neutron diffraction. Rietveld refinement of complementary diffraction data has, for the first time, allowed the crystal structure of m-CPPD to be solved. The monoclinic system P21/n was confirmed and unit-cell parameters determined: a = 12.60842 (4), b = 9.24278 (4), c = 6.74885 (2) Å and β = 104.9916 (3)°. Neutron diffraction data especially have allowed the precise determination of the position of H atoms in the structure. The relationship between the m-CPPD crystal structure and that of the triclinic calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate (t-CPPD) phase as well as other pyrophosphate phases involving other divalent cations are discussed by considering the inflammatory potential of these phases and/or their involvement in different diseases. These original structural data represent a key step in the understanding of the mechanisms of crystal formation involved in different types of arthritis and to improve early detection of calcium pyrophosphate (CPP) phases in vivo

Crystallisation of a highly metastable hydrated calcium pyrophosphate phase

A simple and fast synthesis method was set up to obtain pure hydrated calcium pyrophosphate (CPP)phases of biological interest. This work focused on a specific phase synthesised at 25 uC and pH 4.5 in a stirred tank reactor. Powder X-ray diffraction, FTIR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and thermogravimetric analyses revealed that the phase is unknown but presents similarities with a monoclinic tetrahydrated CPP phase (Ca2P2O7?4H2O, m-CPPT b phase) synthesised under the same conditions of pH and temperature. Characterisation of the unreferenced phase (u-CPP) has been performed, especially to better identify its composition, structure and stability, as well as its possible relation to the m-CPPT b phase or to other hydrated CPP phases

Surface properties of biomimetic nanocrystalline apatites; applications in biomaterials

Several types of nanocrystalline apatites have been described, obtained in various ways. Among these, biomimetic nanocrystalline apatites (BNA), whose characteristics are close to those of biological apatites, have been shown to exhibit specific properties mainly related to their surface structure and composition. The aim of this paper is to review current knowledge of these compounds

Adsorption on apatitic calcium phosphates for drug delivery: interaction with bisphosphonate molecules

Bisphosphonates (BPs) are well established as an important class of drugs for the treatment and prevention of several bone disorders including osteoporosis. This work investigated the interaction of two bisphosphonates, risedronate and tiludronate, with several apatitic supports, a well-crystallised hydroxyapatite (HA) and nanocrystalline apatites with varying maturation times, chemical composition and surface characteristics. The purpose was to fully understand the adsorption mechanism and desorption process, by the evaluation of the effect of several physicochemical parameters (temperature, pH and concentration of calcium and phosphate ions). Whatever the nature of the BP and the structure and composition of the apatite, the adsorption of such anti-resorptive agents can be well described as an ion exchange-reaction between phosphates species on the apatitic surface and BP molecules in solution. However, the parameters of adsorption can vary depending on the physicochemical conditions of the adsorption reaction. In addition, the structure and composition of the apatitic surface also influence the adsorption properties. Finally, BPs molecules are slowly released from apatitic supports, because most of the adsorbed molecules are irreversibly bound and not spontaneously released by dilution or simple washing. Moreover, similar to their adsorption, the release of bisphosphonates is strongly affected not only by the chemical properties of the molecule, but also by the chemical and structural characteristics of the apatitic substrates. The understanding of the adsorption and release processes provides fundamental tools for the development of drug delivery systems using apatite materials

Totem de Personnalisation : Conception d'une Interface Tangible pour le Choix de Parcours de Visite dans les Musées

De nos jours, les musées doivent rivaliser avec le marché du divertissement pour attirer un large public. Une solution envisagée pour les rendre plus attractifs tient dans la personnalisation des parcours de visite en fonction des préférences des visiteurs. En se basant sur l'analyse des besoins réalisée auprès de cinq musées, nous avons conçu cinq storyboards d'interface permettant à un groupe de visi-teurs de choisir un parcours en fonction de leurs personnal-ités et envies. Nous avons également identifié grâce à cette analyse, ainsi que la littérature, douze exigences qui nous ont permis d'évaluer les solutions proposées. Enfin, nous avons conçu un prototype basse fidélité de "totem de per-sonnalisation", permettant à chaque membre du groupe de renseigner ses caractéristiques propres puis de collaborer dans le choix de caractéristiques communes.Museums today are competing with the entertainment industry to attract visitors. Personalizing museum visits, depending on visitors’ preferences, is one possible solution for making museums more attractive. Based on an analysis of the needs of museums professionals, we have designed five storyboards of interactions which allow a group of visitors to select a personalized tour based on their characteristics and desires. Based on this analysis and the related work, we have identified twelve requirements to evaluate these solutions. We then designed a low-fidelity prototype which we call "personalization totem", which allows members of the group to specify their individual characteristics and then collaboratively choose the characteristics common to the group