Workshop process & results

We prepared and conducted co-design workshop to identify meaningful insights that would further inform our design. Specifically for this workshop we sought to establish the system requirements that will aid our concept in forming connections between art work and visitors of an art gallery.

The objectives of our workshop were; to identify ways to design for a personal spectator experience that presented a unique (but shareable) value for visitors of the museum, understand the users perception of being placed inside the digital version of physical art on display and, thirdly, to evaluate the effectiveness of digital version of art present at the museum to enhance the visitors’ experience.

To conduct our workshop we first collected a bit of personal information from our participants ahead of time to prepare the appropriate material. We collected information such as:

• Occupation
• Favourite colour
• Favourite childhood activities
• Hobbies
• Future interests

We used the personal information provided by participants to find artwork around those details. Initially we intended to first present participants with the artwork prepared based on each individual interest however the solution we propose would not establish a prior connection and so we adjusted the workshop. Our team still prepared the original work based on individual need however we did not give these artworks to respective participants instead, we laid them out on the table and each participant would choose the artwork they have an interest in and so the workshop began.

The first task requested that participants write down their motivation for choosing the artwork they did and what they found interesting about it. The two factors were met with the same response, participants were drawn to artwork based on a combination of colours (some described as vibrant and others described as depressing) and theme of the content. It is important to note that surprisingly, participants did not voluntarily choose a painting that was intended for them based on keywords they provided but chose artwork at random based on colour and content theme.

From this finding we acknowledged the keywords that would link visitors to the artwork may not necessarily be from a pre-existing connection to the work but a feeling derived from the artworks presented to them at the time. As a result on different occasions may have interests and connections to different artworks. Initially our concept of connecting people to art was derived from keywords provided by the participant however, after this finding, we realized it is more meaningful and beneficial for visitors to have a unique experience if the keywords are pulled from the artworks and their corresponding descriptions.

The image below indicates our findings and implications or concept design.

To look back at our research interview responses indicated that visitors like to know more about the artist to understand the artwork they are exploring. We used this result for our next task in our co-design workshop. We asked participants to indicate with drawings or writing, what information they are interested in knowing more about the artworks presented to them as well as how would they like this information to be presented to them in a way that improves their experience and not detract from the physical artefacts on display.

Our findings of this task does indicate visitors are interested in three main things: background information of the painting (such as era, and style), artists bibliography, and details of what is in the artwork. Participants did not indicate in drawing or writing how they wish to see the information/ description of details displayed digitally but did express concern that how the information is presented on the art could detract from appreciating the art.

In the last of exploring the paper form of the art, participants were given the art originally intended for them based on the personal information they provided prior to the workshop with its corresponding description. The aim of this task is to evaluate the impact of the description to forming a meaningful connection with the art.

Based on responses, participants did not form connections with the artwork based on the description and were more enthusiastic about the ones they had chosen at the beginning. Upon analyzing this data the team did discover that while the physical art presented were in response to the keywords provided, the description was not specific to their personal information but appeared somewhat abstract. For future developments of our concept we have decided that there should be a relationship between the keywords and descriptions to encourage a connection with visitors at art galleries.

Next we had participants interact with the digital version of art. When navigating the artwork on their laptops participants indicated the benefits of this interaction by describing the finer details they would not ordinarily see in a fixed exhibit.

This did inform our design that for a digital version of art on display it should have the functionality to zoom, allowing visitors to benefit from navigating and exploring art at different perspectives and gain meaningful insights of the details included in the art.

One of the main implications for design was to investigate how participants would like their image displayed in the artwork when a connection or link is made for them. They were given a small, medium, and large size of themselves to be physically placed in the art they have found a connection with. For artwork that did not have people content the participants expressed and demonstrated that they would like to be in or linked to the main content within the art for example the moon. For those artworks with people within them, the participants all placed their faces over the face of those in the art ranging in size depending on the size of the people content. The image below gives us a good example of the results of this exercise.

This activity was peered with a follow up question of “How does it make you feel to see yourself in the art?”

The feedback to this was positive though it ranged from “amazed”, “interesting” to “strange”. The main insight we took from this was that participants way of seeing themselves in the artwork is represented by their image on the face of an existing character. To add to this interesting finding, one participant voiced that the connection would be more meaningful if there was some information about the character she is connected to in the art that would bring depth to being placed on the character.

An additional not to this, that was not included in our workshop but informed our design, a participant took a photo of herself in the art with her phone and shared it with friends. This does indicate the need to have a feature that saves and/ or shares the connection experience with others not present.