MuseumMobile » Beth Harris

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:

Peter Samis on Mobile Multimedia

nancyproctor — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:58:02 +0000

“Peter Samis is to museums as James Brown is to soul,” was tweeted earlier this year from the American Association of Museums (AAM) conference in Philadelphia. There is no doubt that Peter’s spirit has inspired my work in museum interpretation ever since my first multimedia tour projects with Tate Modern, and his educational mission and ethics remain a touchstone as I often ask, ‘what would Peter do’ to tell this story, to communicate this message, to reach this audience better?

In this podcast, Peter recounts his experiences with mobile multimedia at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from 2000/2001 to the present day. He also speaks candidly about the future of mobile, companies and business models in the industry, as well as the ‘open source’ project that’s being pursued collaboratively on the Museum Mobile wiki. In closing, he answers questions from Dave Patten of the Science Museum in London, MoMA Learning (Beth Harris, Director of Digital Learning), and educator at the St Louis Art Museum and Michael Mouw from the Minnesota Historical Society.

Be sure to check out SFMOMA’s multimedia programs, podcasts, and in particular, writings by student contributor, Radford Leon, from Herbert Hoover Middle School, celebrated by Peter in this interview.

Peter & I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on our conversation!

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

Museum Podcasts: A SmartHistory.org Dialogue

nancyproctor — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:40:21 +0000

In this podcast we get to hear from two people who are very largely responsible for inspiring the MuseumMobile podcasts: Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. Both were art history professors at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York when they founded SmartHistory.org as an online art history resource for their students and others. SmartHistory brings the ancient concept of the Socratic dialogue into the web 2.0 world with podcast conversations about art that open up a critical space for the listener to engage in the conversation, and model the process through which experts learn and arrive at their opinions.

Beth has now joined MoMA in New York as the Director of Digital Learning. She, Steven and I are joined by Deborah Howes, head of educational media at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Titus Bicknell, technology analyst and former chief engineer for Antenna Audio. Over lunch on New Year’s day in 2009, we talk about why people don’t tend to prepare for their museum visit by downloading podcast tours and other materials – as they might for a run, a flight, or their daily commutes – and what museums can do about it in light of the ‘digital age divide’. We consider the other end of the visit lifecycle as well, in terms of how people can ‘bookmark’ and take information away from the museum for deeper study later – but will only want to do so if the content they encounter during their visit has ‘put them in the picture’ and engaged them. At the heart of the conversation is the question of conversation itself as a context for learning, and how its strategic use helps transform the museum from Acropolis into Agora: a platform where many voices can come together and even the amateur and the outsider are empowered to make discoveries, fall in love, and sing of their passions.