Seminar 2

Chapter 6 - Brainstorming and Ideation

This chapter was focusing on the starting point of projects in general and our group have already passed this part. I can say that this part is something I enjoy when I work in projects and this time was no different. It’s fun to just come up with as many ideas as possible an not having to worrying about if they are good or not. This time in our project we din’t really come up with a whole lot of ideas though, we came up with a concept that we all liked and really wanted to keep working on that single concept. However on that single concept, and the few others we had, we came up with a lot of ideas to further explore that concept so with that in perspective it worked really well for us. In our group we are all good at coming up with ideas and the whole “no ideas are bad” attitude is really accepted in our group and no one is afraid to speak up.

Chapter 7 - Refinement

We haven’t really started the actual prototyping of our concept other than discussing how we want it to look and what features we want, so the refinement have just started. We will go for a simple and timeless design because we want everyone to be able to interact and understand it, we also don’t want the museum to feel the need for continuous upgrading of the system. I think it’s important to not include a lot of new features for our design if we want to keep the simplicity and really focus on making a few features function really well.

Chapter 8 - Prototyping, testing and development

Well, this chapter is hard to discuss since we aren’t really there yet. But we will probably build some kind of web-based prototype and see if we can test it at the museum. None of us have any real experience in prototyping like this but if we find a good way to build the prototype I think this part of the project will be really fun.

State-Of-The-Art Analysis - "The Informationplack"

The existing technology, which I have chosen to analyze are the (often) small informatory signs that are placed throughout many exhibitions to give the visitor lucid information of what that specific section is about. I will from now on refer to these signs as informationplacks.

Today there are a lot of museums that use this traditional method of conveying information to the visitors, and not without reason. I think this is a good and fairly easy way to give information. However, it is not a method suited for all.

The people who are targeted by this technology are normal-level readers and people who doesn't have too short of an attention span to actually get through these texts (they can vary a lot in length and complexity).

The problem with this sort of interaction with the exhibition is that it is very static, not very interactive and frankly quite boring for people who are not interested in the specific subject that the plack concerns. Children are often "forced" to go to museums, either by their parents or by their teachers, i.e. they are not there because have a desire of their own to learn more about whatever the exhibition is about, but because they have to. Simply put, informationplack aren't very exciting for kids who are being brought up in a digital age.

The way I see it, one alternative to these analog informationplacks is something similar but digital that could be more flexibly adjustable to the user. Or maybe something digital to complement the analog informationplacks.

What is working well with the traditional informationplacks:

• Low maintenance - once set up they won't require much maintenance from the staff. 
• Cost-effective - Hopefully they only need to be updated when there is a new exhibition and they don't use any resources in terms of electricity and maintenance. 
• Simple - They are very easy to understand, what you see it what you get. 

What is not working well with the traditional informationplacks:

• Not very interactive - They are, as the caption may suggest, not very interactive which I think is resulting in my next caption.
• Unattractive for the youngest visitors - People brought up in the digital age are used to constantly interacting and being stimulated. I believe that simply reading from different placks throughout an exhibition can therefore be very unrewarding and not very motivational. Also, people with reading difficulties will take substantially longer to get through the plack and make it harder to assimilate the information. 
• Content Update - In order to update the information of a traditional informationplack you need to produce a new plack, whereas with a digital version you would only need to make changes in the database.