Evaluation-led Mobile Experience Design

nancyproctor — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:20:06 +0000

At the MCN conference in Portland in November, I presented some of the research I’ve been doing on new approaches to mobile experience design. Sheila Carey from the Canadian Heritage Information Network kindly put together a panel for the conference on “Making the Call: Evaluating Mobile Projects in Museums” that pulled my work together with that of Sherry Hsi, who analyzed with keen hindsight the Exploratorium’s seminal Electronic Guidebook project, and Koven Smith’s latest call to action: don’t pilot – develop! More on that later…

My slides are here; the podcast of the talk is here. If you have comments or ideas to build on this work, there are pages on the Museum Mobile wiki dedicated to the topic:

The Gallery Overview: An Experiment at the IMA

nancyproctor — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:22:27 +0000

Visiting the Indianapolis Museum of Art during Museums & the Web 2009 was an inspiration in many ways, but the one we got on tape was a discussion and subsequent experiment in creating an audio tour gallery overview. Richard McCoy, objects conservator at the IMA, and Beth Harris, director of digital learning at MoMA and principle of SmartHistory.org, and I took a whirlwind tour through a few galleries as the museum was closing. Tom Jones, a guard at the IMA, kindly kept the ‘Rembrandt Room’ of the Clowes Collection open for us so we wouldn’t miss one of his favorite masterpieces, and he gave us some advice on how to visit the IMA’s collection as well.

In this podcast, you’ll hear us using the SmartHistory dialogue technique to work through some of the ideas for ‘soundtracks‘ and ‘soundbites‘ that I introduced at the AAM Learning in Museums seminar in Minneapolis/St. Paul last summer. We tried to understand how, without rooting visitors to the spot listening to ‘soundbites’ in front of one object after another, we could quickly provide some basic keys to reading a gallery of artworks, designed to be listened to as a ‘soundtrack’ by visitor strolling through the space. We realized that in so doing we were effectively reading the curator’s intentions: the stories and relationships created by the placement of objects in the space, the design, look and feel of the gallery, etc.

There have, of course, been many wonderful gallery overviews in hundreds or even thousands of audio tours over the years. This one is intended to lay bare the aim and structure of the soundtrack and help us re-examine some of the fundamental concepts and components of the audio tour. Your comments and criticisms on this ‘working document’ will be very helpful and welcome!

Credits (in order of appearance in the podcast, excluding room overviews):

Master of the Legend of St. Ursula
Flemish
Triptych of the Annunciation, about 1483
oil on wood
23 ¼ x 45 ¾ in. (overall)
1997.138
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Acquired through the generosity of Lilly Endowment and Anonymous Art Fund

Master of the Legend of St. Godelieve
Flemish
The Miracles of Santiago, about 1500
oil on panel
32 x 138 in. (open)
24.3
Indianapolis Museum of Art, James E. Roberts Fund

Rembrandt van Rijn
Dutch (1606-1669)
Self-Portrait, about 1629
oil on wood
17 ½ x 13 ½ in.
C10063
Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Clowes Fund Collection

Follower of Rembrandt van Rijn
Dutch (1606-1669)
Old Man with a Tall, Fur-edged Cap
oil on wood
9 ¾ x 7 ½ in.
C10062
Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Clowes Fund Collection

The Espro-Acoustiguide Audiotour Player at MoMA

nancyproctor — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:39:03 +0000

Vodcast review of Espro-Acoustiguide’s new audiotour player at MoMA in New York, January 1, 2009. Compare it to MoMA’s Wifi Tours, reviewed in the March 15, 2009 vodcast and discussed by MoMA Wifi’s creator, Lotte Meijer, in the March 8, 2009 podcast.

MuseumMobile » audiotour

Evaluation-led Mobile Experience Design

The Gallery Overview: An Experiment at the IMA

The Espro-Acoustiguide Audiotour Player at MoMA