Exhibition designer interview and contextual inquiry guide now up on wiki

[Ron Wakkary]

Hi Clayton,

It really depends on the granularity of location tracking we want. The RFID/optical tracking is more difficult to install in the museum and is costly. More recently we used a simpler IR system that is a different approach, less accurate but easier to maintain, install, and less expensive. See this paper on our kurio system <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1517712&dl=ACM> or the web site <kurio.iat.sfu.ca>.

Ron

----- "Clayton H Lewis" <Clayton.Lewis at Colorado.EDU> wrote:

> very useful references!
> 
> 
> newbie question: would you say that the combined Radio Frequency
> Identification (RFID) and optical position tracking system you used
> for ec(h)o is a kind of thing we should be assuming can be available
> as standard kit (robustness, cost, etc)?
> 
> 
> 
> On Apr 25, 2009, at 8:55 PM, Ron Wakkary wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> 
> Agreed! We've used variations of CI mixed with ethnography in the
> past. Two instances involved museums. There were a few things that we
> found to be very important that are not explicit in the draft but I'm
> sure you've considered. It also goes without saying that each inquiry
> became tailored to each institution to some degree so a generic
> protocol is only a starting point.
> 
> 
> * Repeat visits are a must or at minimum field visits were scheduled
> over several consecutive days, e.g. a week. This allowed for refining
> the protocol, targeting the inquiries, reflection, and follow-up.
> * We relied equally on participant observation (which requires putting
> the time in) as well as interviews. We targeted our observation work
> at visitor experiences, institutional overviews, and targeted
> stakeholder roles or functions, e.g. exhibit planning or content
> management.
> * We found that observing activities and workflows in museums are
> difficult due to the project nature of museums, complexity, and
> duration. We relied on a few additional techniques to observation and
> interviews, namely go-alongs (targeted observation of activities),
> video walkthroughs (videotaped talk-aloud sessions aimed at particular
> work activities or situated discussion and demonstrations of
> stakeholder perceptions of museum functions like an exhibit, for
> example), and documents collection and analysis. These forms of data
> collection allowed us to "triangulate" and reconstruct workflows and
> activities.
> * We also were committed to "reciprocity", meaning that data collected
> and analyzed was presented back to informants and stakeholders for
> correction and input. This also set us up very well for later
> participatory design activities.
> 
> 
> If it is helpful I can circulate or post a copy of an in-depth
> internal report on requirements gathering we completed in our last
> museum project, Kurio < http://kurio.iat.sfu.ca/ >. It covers our
> methods, data, and analysis.
> 
> 
> We also found information ecologies, based on activity theory to be a
> helpful framework for designing the protocol and interview questions
> and later analysis. This is particularly so with inquiries where
> organizational and technology issues intersect. This approach helped
> us to acquire high level or ecological understandings of the site but
> also specifically with design implications. If you are interested see
> our M&W 2005 paper:
> 
> 
> http://www.archimuse.com/mw2005/papers/wakkary/wakkary.html
> 
> 
> and for design implications in using an ecological approach see a 2006
> DIS paper:
> 
> 
> http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1142405.1142448
> 
> 
> If you have trouble accessing any of these just let me know.
> 
> 
> best,
> Ron
> 
> 
> ----- "Clayton H Lewis" < Clayton.Lewis at Colorado.EDU > wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> excellent material!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> can we work something in that asks about visitors with disabilities,
> eg
> 
> 
> 
> 
> are there aspects of your exhibit development process that address the
> interests of visitors with disabilities?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> are there things that you'd like to do to address the interests of
> visitors with disabilities?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Apr 20, 2009, at 10:19 PM, James William Yoon wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hullo,
> 
> 
> I've put up a working draft of our exhibition designer interview and
> contextual inquiry guide on the wiki (along with Word, Pages, and PDF
> versions under the attachments). For the time being, it's one of the
> child pages off of the main Engage page. The direct link is:
> 
> 
> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=6818521
> 
> 
> Feel free to comment and edit where things are missing or unfitting.
> 
> 
> James
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> Clayton Lewis
> Professor of Computer Science
> Scientist in Residence, Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities
> University of Colorado
> http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~clayton
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> Clayton Lewis
> Professor of Computer Science
> Scientist in Residence, Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities
> University of Colorado
> http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~clayton