Museum of Anthropology Handheld Prototype

Overview:

In mid April 2004 Ubiquity’s handheld multimedia guide was installed at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) in Vancouver. MOA is Canada’s largest teaching museum and home to a vast collection of cultural objects from around the world, with an emphasis on Northwest Coast art and artifacts.

The Ubiquity handheld was featured in the area of MOA known as The Rotunda. The Rotunda is home to the Bill Reid sculpture ‘The Raven and the First Men’, one of the most celebrated works in Canadian art. The massive Raven sculpture dominates the area, and is flanked by four cases of Bill Reid’s smaller works in gold, silver, wood, and stone.

Click here for an interactive introduction to the MOA handheld project.

Visitor Experience & Technology:

Ubiquity’s handheld multimedia guide provided museum visitors with a new kind of interpretive experience in the gallery environment. The system used infrared location sensing to trigger content relevant to each visitor’s physical location, and then delivered an assortment of archival footage, animations, graphics, video, and expert commentary to the handheld device. Bookmarking and screen-sharing features allowed visitors to exchange information with one another in the gallery space and “save” portions of exhibit-related media for later viewing on the Internet.

Visitor Studies:

Visitor studies were conducted in late April 2004, with our findings presented at the American Association of Museums Conference in New Orleans in May 2004. In laying the theoretical foundations of our visitor studies we made a point of focusing on a ‘visitorcentric’ approach, one that places the visitor’s perceptions, needs, and expectations as the focus. We felt it was critical that we looked at this new technology and interaction model in terms of what it gave to visitors that enriched their museum experience and justified the introduction of a new technology.
Our methodology was developed in consultation with an anthropologist and used the ethnographic interview as the main investigative tool. One-to-one interviews were conducted, using face-to-face interaction, on-site observation, and open-ended questions. This approach ensured that we remained respondent-directed during the studies and captured an “inside looking out” picture of the visitor’s experience.
Our findings provided us with significant qualitative data about mobile experience, with a number of system testers sharing with us their expectations of the technology and their emotional connection to it. What emerged was a personal device of which ‘personality’ was expected: a playfulness, an on-screen richness, and a responsiveness. Based on this data we are developing an interaction model specific to mobile devices and the social spaces in which they exist.

Visitor Comments:

“This gets me to the point much faster and gives me a richer base for comparison by giving me the visual facts that make up the story.”

“It challenged me to look at opportunities…creating a kind of first person moment.”

“The device made me want to explore.“

“It’s another form of recognition…it’s easier to understand what you’re looking at when described visually”

“It did all the work for me by breaking things down into small pieces.”

“You guys just nailed it. It definitely makes what might seem like elite subject matter easier to digest…and satisfies your curiosity by being able to further explore things that spark your interest.”