This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes an EAGER project that conducts ongoing experiments on the chemical precursors to life as exhibit experiences in partner venues.
This poster from the 2014 AISL PI Meeting summarizes the work done in the first year of a two-year project looking at using an indoor positioning system to (1) automate the collection of timing and tracking data for visitor research and (2) enable location-aware applications that enhance the visitor experience inside a museum.
This front-end evaluation sought (1) to identify visitors' prior knowledge of microbial oceanography, and (2) to determine visitors’ interest in the different research conducted by microbial oceanographers with metagenomics data. The findings from this study served to (1) guide the selection of scientific datasets that are meaningful to visitors, (2) suggest areas of interest to highlight, and (3) identify information or explanations visitors may need to make sense of the content, for the Living Liquid pathways project that aimed to use visualization tools to engage museum visitors with
This research explores how to support collaborative learning practices when science museum visitors employ their own personal mobile devices as Opportunistic User Interfaces (O-UIs) to manipulate a simulation-based museum exhibit. The sophisticated graphical capabilities of modern mobile devices have the potential to distract visitors, a phenomenon known as the heads-down effect. To study the impact of O-UI design on collaboration, a highly-dynamic "complex" O-UI was contrasted against more simplistic, "remote-control" OUI design, in the context of a cancer-treatment simulation. As expected
Through an iterative design process involving museum educators, learning scientists and technologists, and drawing upon our previous experiences in handheld game design and a growing body of knowledge on learning through gaming, we designed an interactive mystery game called Mystery at the Museum (the High Tech Whodunnit), which was designed for synchronous play of groups of parents and children over a two to three hour period. The primary design goals were to engage visitors more deeply in the museum, engage visitors more broadly across museum exhibits, and encourage collaboration between
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Eric KlopferJudy PerryKurt SquireMing-Fong JanConstance Steinkuehler
Studies of interactive systems in museums have raised important design considerations, but so far have failed to address sufficiently the particularities of family interaction and co-operation. This paper introduces qualitative video-based observations of Japanese families using an interactive portable guide system in a museum. Results suggest that interaction with the system is socially structured through family relationships, leading to unexpected usage. The paper highlights the necessity to more fully consider familial relationships in HCI.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Tom HopeYoshiyuki NakamuraToru TakahashiAtsushi NobayashiShota FukuokaMasahiro HamasakiTakuichi Nishimura
The availability of mobile and stationary devices opens up new challenges to support users in several contexts. Here we present a multi-device environment to support cooperation among museum visitors through games. In particular, we present a design and the associated implementation for using a combination of PDAs and public displays to enhance the learning experience in a museum setting by using game playing interactions. The basic assumption is to use the mobile devices for individual game play, and the situated displays for synchronized public views of shared game play; the individual game
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Riccardo DiniFabio PaternoCarmen Santoro
Designers of mobile, social systems must carefully think about how to help their users manage spatial, semantic, and social modes of navigation. Here, we describe our deployment of MobiTags, a system to help museum visitors interact with a collection of "open storage" exhibits, those where the museum provides little curatorial information. MobiTags integrates social tagging, art information, and a map to support navigation and collaborative curation of these open storage collections. We studied 23 people's use of MobiTags in a local museum, combining interview data with device use logs and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Dan CosleyJonathan BaxterSoyoung LeeBrian AlsonSaeko NomuraPhil AdamsChethan SarabuGeri Gay
The museum visit is an important part of elementary school science teaching. However, a divide exists between teachers, who require curricular accountability, and museums, who emphasize free-choice exploration. Can a carefully constructed worksheet bridge this divide by providing free-choice exploration of curricular topics during the museum visit? In the present study, a theoretical framework was constructed to inform the design of worksheets as free-choice learning devices. This framework was used to analyze the design of an existing museum worksheet. Subsequently, curriculum-related
This article presents a contextual model of learning that examines visitor learning in museums. It explores features of the model, factors that can influence learning in a museum setting, and challenges associated with teaching in a museum context.