Technological developments open new opportunities to meet the increasing expectations of visitors to galleries, libraries, archives or museums. Although these technologies provide many new possibilities, individual challenges and limitations are rife. Galleries, libraries, archives and museums should aim to unify many such technologies in order to capture visitor attention, engage interaction and facilitate both personal and social experiences. By incorporating objects, devices and people into a network of interconnected systems, new patterns, interaction types and social relations are expected to emerge.
This thesis explores the unification of these technologies, identifies behavioural patterns emerging from visitor interactions and examines how combining these technologies can contribute to engaging visitor interactions and the effects they have on both individuals and groups.
The thesis states that combining mobile devices and interactive displays will offer new engaging interactions for museum visitors. This will allow them to spread their interactions throughout the museum and easily switch between private and social experiences. Museums should therefore adopt combinations of mobile devices and interactive displays to meet the increasing expectations of their visitors and offer both private and social experiences
