MuseumMobile » random access

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:

Art is hard: how mobile can help

nancyproctor — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:52:41 +0000

Nina Simon is an innovative designer of participatory museum experiences. In addition to lecturing widely, she authors the Museum 2.0 blog, which has become a primary touchstone and resource for best practice in the museum world. What may be less well-known about Nina is her background as a performance poet and how she was inspired to get into art museums by a painting from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum: Morris Louis’s Faces from 1959, which she saw in a touring exhibition at the Worchester Art Museum in Massachusetts.

Nina Simon with Morris Louis's Faces, 1959, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

In January 2009, I got to revisit that painting and many other artworks in the American Art Museum, including an exhibition of Frank Gohlke’s photography, with Nina as we talked about our experiences and aspirations for mobile interpretation. Along the way we recalled Peter Samis‘s trope of ‘visual velcro‘ in describing how interpretation can be essential to helping visitors connect with certain artworks in particular. We talked about the power of dialogue and the conversational tone, as exemplified in the SmartHistory.org podcasts. Our views of cellphone tours and headphones got tossed around, with an idea for podcasts that can work both as gallery tours and as learning experiences beyond the museum. And we shared our enthusiasm for games and how they can bring adaptive learning experiences to museum interpretation, referencing Jane McGonigal’s talk for AAM’s Center for the Future of Museums.

Thanks to Nina, I got to look at the art museum for the first time through the revealing lens of the science museum. She pointed out that science museums often invoke their visitors as scientists or researchers, helping them make discoveries and relive in some way the subject as professionals experience it. Why, she asks, do art museums not position the visitor as an artist, curator, or art historian? How can we all – visitors and museum staff alike – give ourselves license to create and innovate within the museum experience?

Hear the podcast…

Audio Tours 101: Writing the Rules

nancyproctor — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:18:12 +0000

This week kicks off a mini-series of podcasts on the basics of audio tours: their history and fundamental principles; the role of technology and theatricality in their evolution; the primacy of the story and the question of who gets to tell it.

In this first podcast, Chris Hardman, founder and Artistic Director of Antenna Theater, which became the global audio tour company, Antenna Audio, talks about ‘writing the rules’ of audio tour creation with David Torgersen, the senior sound designer for Antenna Theater for 15 years and producer of more than 300 audio tours around the world.

Stay tuned to hear about the pros and cons of linear versus random access technology, the impact of new 21st century platforms on audio tour content design and use, and the emerging role of ‘citizen curators’ as the world becomes “an audio tour waiting to happen.”