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By Angela Spinazze - November 2002
Angela Spinazze reports on a CIMI symposium on the Handscape Project which is exploring potential use scenarios for mobile (hand-held) computing in museums. Further material on the Handscape Project's research is also available in this issue.
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Handscape is a research project funded by Intel Corporation and conducted by CIMI and the Human Computer Interaction Group (HCI) at Cornell University [1] . The project is concerned with exploring potential use scenarios for mobile (hand-held) computing in museums.
To date, the nature of mobile computing projects in museums has typically been one-off, test the new technology type projects, conducted in isolation, with the results shared internally with project participants. Generally speaking these were road tests, with no intention of continuing beyond the test period. Throughout the museum community there was little communication and little interest in sharing findings on the impact of these technologies.
The Handscape project is trying to change this approach through an open dialogue with the community within which our research is taking place. Towards that end, a symposium was held on 24 June 2002 to mark the end of the first year of Handscape research. The symposium was presented free of charge, in Hillsboro, Oregon, at Intel Corporation's Jones Farm Conference Center.
The day began with a presentation by Professor Geri Gay, Director of the HCI Group at Cornell University and Michael Stefanone, a PhD student associated with the project. Professor Gay's remarks focused on the history of mobile computing in cultural environments, and her research over the past ten years in those environments. She was followed by Michael Stefanone, who presented the Handscape research to date.
This opening session was followed by an invited group of six speakers who presented case studies of mobile computing projects in museums, and new products in development for the cultural community. The afternoon involved a "day in the life" exercise, wherein participants worked in small groups to storyboard potential scenarios.
Cultural heritage professionals, representing institutions and applications developers from North America and the UK, participated in the event. The symposium agenda, list of participants and select presentations are available from the CIMI web site [2].
After the morning break, a group of six invited speakers presented their perspectives on mobile computing in museums. The speakers were Steve Ruddy, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Alexander Sherman, Field Museum of Natural History, Tom Paschkis and Scott Guerin, wiVID Systems, Inc., Sherry Hsi, Metacourse Inc., C. Ward Bond, Talking Signs, Inc., and Leonard Steinbach, Cleveland Museum of Art.
The first two speakers participated in Handscape this year. Mr. Ruddy presented the impressive history of mobile computing undertaken by the Royal Botanic Gardens over the past ten years and some of their plans for the future, and Mr. Sherman presented a prototype gallery guide system that the Field Museum tested in 2001.
Mr. Paschkis and Mr. Guerin offered visitors a look at the past, the form of their first foray into mobile computing back in 1998 as well as a glimpse into the future and their new system - a flexible tool for developing, delivering, and accessing content for and to museum visitors.
Ms. Hsi is an experienced HCI researcher and has been working for several years with the Exploratorium on their hand-held computing research. She presented their most recent research involving the museum's Electronic Guidebook.
Mr. Bond discussed the needs of visitors with disabilities and some of the very straightforward ways, such as wayfinding, in which museums could use mobile technologies to enhance experiences for these museum visitors.
Mr. Steinbach of the Cleveland Museum of Art demonstrated results, in the form of multimedia files, from a project involving the Museum and students of the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Finally, the afternoon provided participants with a chance to be creative and share their ideas on how they would like to see mobile computing advance within the museum environment. Starting with some of the results from our research, participants were assigned to discussion groups and asked to construct a "Day in the Life" scenario. To assist participants with this exercise, several questions were posed, such as:
After several hours of deliberations, conversations, and negotiations, each group presented their scenario. The results were a refreshing set of potential scenarios for wayfinding and social interaction across a group of museums on a university campus, interactive exhibits that turned into on-line games, celebrity-guided tours (such as the Madonna tour of Kew Gardens), and a treasure hunt for families.
As the symposium came to an end, both participants and the Handscape project team agreed to keep the conversation going so that more exchanges like this one could take place. A list serve was created for participants to keep up to date with Handscape activities and to solicit feedback from the group. And, the WhiteSite will soon have a calendar of upcoming application launches so that anyone involved in designing and developing these types of applications can find out what is happening and where. If your institution is planning to deploy a mobile computing application and you would like others to know about it, we would be pleased to include the event in this new calendar.
Requests to join the list serve or postings of application launch dates on the calendar can be sent to Angela Spinazze, Handscape Project Manager [details].
Angela Spinazze
Consultant
ATSPIN consulting
3270 N. Lake Shore Drive, Suite 5E
Chicago
Illinois 60657
USA
Tel: +1.773.281.1515
Fax: +1.773.442.0071
URL: <http://www.atspin.com>
Email: ats@atspin.com
Angela Spinazze has worked within the cultural heritage community since 1986. Her consulting focuses on informatics and content architecture- related issues. She has worked with clients on issues including knowledge management, digital libraries, mobile computing, strategic planning and implementation of new technologies, integrated access to collections and related research and virtual (Web-based) collections, process re-engineering, data migration, and visual literacy. Most recently, she has been involved with the Este Court Archive, a Culture 2000 Project to provide unified access to the dispersed collections amassed by the Este Family during the Renaissance. She is also working with The University of Notre Dame and its investigation of developing a digital visual resources collection. She also works with CIMI as manager of the Handscape Project.
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For citation purposes:
Spinazze, A. "Understanding Visitor Expectations and Museums as Mobile Computing Environments", Cultivate Interactive, issue
8, 15 November 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue8/hssymposium/>
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