“Learning from Interactive Museum Installations About Interaction Design for Public Settings”
This paper was written by Eva Hornecker and Matthias Stifter for the OZCHI ‘06 Proceedings of the 18th Australia conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Design: Activities, Artefacts and Environments. This paper discusses the results of a case study about museum installations and how these can make museum visits engaging for visitors. The installations evaluated were a part of the ‘medien.welton’ exhibition at the Austrian Technical Museum in Vienna. Those who conducted the evaluation were part of the IGW Institute of TU Vienna. The exhibit is composed of various types of interactive installations: five touch screens that offer an overview of the exhibit and six information terminals for exploration. A ‘smartcard’ can also be purchased which serves as a ‘digital backpack’ that stores data users can access online. The reason for many installations in a single exhibit is to make “interaction a part of its ‘message’” (135). Curators wanted to not only draw attention to the evolution of modern media but also the risks that are associated with this change.
The methods of evaluation included open observations and 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with a representative sample of museum visitors. Some of the questions asked involved overall user experience, improvements, and reasons for buying the ‘smartcard.’ The evaluation showed that most visitors spend about two minutes figuring out how to use the installations before they give up or spend time using them. Moreover, visitors feel overwhelmed by the amount of text on screens. Other noteworthy discoveries include the ‘layering of activities’ and the effectiveness of the Newsroom installation. The authors of this article conclude that “creative, communicative and personal interactions as a valuable avenue for installations in public spaces” (141).
The discoveries of this case study are actually very important to our project. Though we were only required to conduct heuristic evaluations, walkthroughs, and usability tests, the results of these tests suggest that users do feel overwhelmed when there is a lot of text on screens. Some visitors felt overwhelmed by the amount of text and information displayed on the installations. From the interviews conducted, some suggested that they would prefer to read this information next to the exhibits. Though I would argue that our interactive smartboard/installation is less wordier than what the installations discussed, it serves as a good question to ask ourselves: would users feel overwhelmed using our design? Based on the usability tests we conducted, the answer to this question for our design is no. Another suggestion that came up in this case study is that users would prefer to take content home. An interesting idea that just popped to mind is if we could somehow incorporate that aspect to our design. Though I feel that it is too late to do that now, if a person was truly interested about a particular exhibit, they could have the option to receive texts about other users’ comments. At one point our design also lacked creativity which made it less engaging, so yes, I do believe that their points are valid.
Hornecker, Eva, and Matthias Stifter. “Learning from interactive museum installations about interaction design for public settings.” Proceedings of the 18th Australia conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Design: Activities, Artefacts and Environments. ACM, 2006.
Here is the link to download the pdf.