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Low fidelity Digital prototype
Museums play the essential role in the cultural and educational life of society through interpretation of meanings and preserving the history heritage. However, the last statistics shows that number of visitors in museums is rapidly decreasing (The Baltimore Sun, 2019). Our team has noticed that user experience in museums could be improved through applying new ways of interaction. Initial interviews helped us to identify the problem space and possible ways to approach it. Through interview with an industry expert we discovered that aim of each exhibition is to tell visitors the story behind the objects, whereas users interviews showed people understand the story only if they feel connected towards it or can draw a parallel to their own experience. We identified this gap as a problem space and tried to address it by creating the prototype that could help people feel connected to the art.
To address the problem, we started from literature review about existing applications in this filed and initial interviews with museum expert and regular museum visitors. As was mentioned above, interview showed the difference between various target groups: people who are in art (have deep knowledgeable in this field) and public who has a general understanding of art. These two audiences have completely different attitude to museums and perceiving the information in museums. First group didn’t have any issues with existing format and didn’t like the idea of having extra interactions with the art, having concerns it could spoil the whole impression. In the other side, the second group, would like to have additional features and options to interact within that space.
Since the first group did not want any changes, we tried to develop our project without creating potential limitations for them, so they still could interact in the usual for them way and to explore new features only if they want to. After finishing the first interview round, we analyzed the results and conducted the second one. We changed the approach and asked not only the visitors, but artists as well. We discovered that artist can help to fill the gap by telling the story by himself, but it is limited function since not all artists can be on the place and translate that meaning behind. Some of the artists even died, so we looked for a way to make people find a connection by themselves. For this reason, we decided to run a co-design workshop aiming to find what exactly makes people feel more connected to the specific artwork. The workshop helped us to identify similarities and people’s reactions to our idea about connecting them through key-words. User testings showed positive feedback and good emotional reactions when visitors saw themselves in the digital version (read more in sections Workshop Design, Workshop Protocol, Workshop process & results).
We generate several ideas based on the insights we gained from literature review and contextual enquiry.
The original concept was named “about the artist (token projection)”. This is a pocket-sized tangible projection that would be given to visitors upon entering the gallery. Idea considered having special sockets allocated to each artwork and the gadget would be pluggable to them. After the visitor plugs their gadget into the socket, the token would project background information about artwork and its digital version.
Then our group reviewed this concept from several aspects. Although the projection features enabled user to see more details about the artwork along with its description, there were limitations about this concept. First was the technique issue, it was hard to integrate the projection with the token. Second was the required amount of work, as well as the fact that it was unnecessary for users to carry this device if there is no unique experience.
Then we put our sights back to the literature review. The study of shared mobile display for this space (Lanir, Wecker, Kuflik, & Felberbaum, 2016) indicated that a shared larger display motivates group cohesion, should everyone participate in a collective tour of the exhibition. The previous research also indicated visitors evoked "rich sensory relationships to some of the tangible objects" and that people valued them as a physical reminder of their interaction in a museum. Based on these insights we developed our concept as a digital screen which allows user to zoom in and zoom out. Also, for making this experience more unique, we added “face into the painting” feature.
Understanding the fact about uniqueness of this feature, we were not sure how users would accept that. So we conducted a workshop to test their acceptance and collect their feedback. The participants were asked to answer questions that could help us to identify their preferences based on occupation, personal hobbies favorite colors and others. Then we tried to provide artworks with paintings that could relate to them and have familiar stories behind. Regarding the feedbacks, we found out that most participants did not form connections based on the provided description. The description may not have been specifically connected to the keywords provided for the participants in the workshop. So, we decided to find keywords from artwork first by digging a story behind the painting and only then provide users keywords so they can chose what meanings relate to them.
Lena Panova:
- Analysis of 2nd round interviews
- Initial protocol of the Design Worshop
- Tangible devise (Arduino)
Chuike Lee
- Analyse workshop findings
- Implications for design
- Pop-up windows with description (HTML/CSS/JavaScript)
Emma Safarova
- Museum's observations
- Analysis of 1st round interviews
- Interactive prototype for the first part of the interaction
Zhijiang Wang:
- Supporting material
- Initial literature review
EVERYONE:
- 2 workshops
- Preparation for prototype's demonstration
The Baltimore Sun, 2019. Museum attendance. Baltimore Sun Media Group publication. Retrieved from: [https://www.baltimoresun.com/dp-history-museum-attendance-graphic-graphic.html]
Lanir, J., Wecker, A. J., Kuflik, T., & Felberbaum, Y. (2016). Shared mobile displays: An exploratory study of their use in a museum setting. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 20(4), 635–651. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-016-0931-y