AAM Digital Museum Webinar 2: Technology and Museum Visitor Experiences

Pre-webinar: So I'm waiting on the start of the second in a series of AAM webinars about The Digital Museum. I worked with Learning Times tech support, so with luck I will not be holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder, but will have the opportunity to use my shiny shiny headphones instead. Below the jump will be my notes, in the understandable only to me, maybe, format that I favor.

Woo, they're talking and I can hear them! And there's a poll and I can see the results as they come in. Way cool!


Peter Samis - SFMOMA
- Frameworks of meanings - contextualization, webs of relationships
- Anchors in experience, velcro vs. teflon. Low v. high context environments: continuum.

Scott Sayre - Ways to Restore context
Audio Tours in Transition: Cell Phones
-Audio tours have an evolving history as technology evolves. mp3 and cell phone tours are the thing now.
- Cell phone as unifying device. Cell phone eliminates peripheral costs of hardware
- Cell phone tours easily move outside of the museum *can link museum to community with a minimum of cost*
- GPS and geotagging. Yes. yes yes yes. This is good for us since this is a rural, environmentally oriented community. Way to connect objects to museum, and to connect the landscape to the museum. Integration of landscape and technology. YES YES YES.

Robin Dowden, Walker Art Center: Audio Tours in Transitions: Multimedia tours.
- Frida Kahlo multimedia handheld guide.
- additional cost, but used by 12% of visitors.
- sounded really cool, really interesting, would like to take that tour.

Peter Samis: add axis to continuum - personal mobile (like the above two) to social embedded. SFMOMA "smart tables" just above phone tours. It's a step above wall text - conveys interest and passion more than words on the wall at an eighth grade reading level.
- Learning lounges which are focussed info points and provide place for interaction
- most people use wall text, but it is the least helpful source of info (audio tours being best)
- More interpretive sources used= more art appreciation

Robin Dowden: Embedded social spaces: Case study: Dialog table
- sociable computing. Gesture recognition of picking, grabbing and dropping. AWESOME. Not really useful for us, but dude. We are living in the future. Where's my jetpack?
- Case study: Dolphin Oracle II: dolphin responds, expands vocabulary.
- these things exist within the range of possible experiences.

Mike Mouw and Dan Spock: Minnesota Historical Society.
-increasing social aspects of the museum visit, enhancing the social experience
- game in the MN150 gallery: quiz show type thing with points. How fun!
- Open house exhibit: modern style lantern slide with rfid tags. Cabinet exploration. Stories in plates on the table. Wow. These are so cool.
- Immersive experiences enhance the entire museum visit

General Q&A:
-Designing for the experience and allowing the technology to fade into the background (MHS). How to create connections to the narrative arc?
- open discussion box breaks down into question central.
- cell phone coverage issue?
- MHS finds that everyone loves the game. All ages.
- familiarity with technology is the leading factor



post-webinar throughts: Whew. The experience is a great deal more pleasant with head phones. The projects profiled by the presenters are all very exciting. But they all appear very costly and I am keeping in mind solutions for my very small institution which has a disproportionately small budget. The idea of geotagging collections was mentioned, and the idea of using cell phone tours to lead tours to places (historic buildings). These two seem to have the most potential here - we have a relatively small community and a large outlying area with a focus on agriculture. Also, our exhibit space will be very small. But working out a way to integrate content into the community at large, via cell phone use, has a lot of potential.