Immersive Museum Experience: Process Week 3

Moving into Week 3, I was able to make quite good progress with regards to my general concept, but there was still a significant amount of ambiguity that I needed to work through and clarify. Specifically, we discussed my idea for the interaction in the most depth. The concept that I discussed with them is explained in the below spread:

Interaction concept that I discussed with Cameron, Daphne and Matt

This week, I was able to talk to talk to Cameron, Daphne and Matt, who really helped me better understand what I needed to focus on in terms of moving my exhibition forward:

1. Get rid of tabletop printer idea, as it seems a little general. Focus the exhibition more on ‘demystifying’ the artist’s work, and think of how to identify and resolve points of confusion by writing out a list of questions and answering them. e.g. how will people obtain the stamps/ emblems?
2. Thinking about the post visit experience — how can viewers ‘take home’ the experience? What do I want them to gain from visiting the pop up exhibition?
3. Deciding whether or not to make all the video references available for viewing. What if there are people who are curious? Also, will the experience for videos watched in the house and other references viewers might be curious about be different?
4. How can the activation experience be more streamlined and interesting?

With these new pieces of advice in mind, I went back and looked at new interaction idea possibilities. I settled on the idea of a surface table, because it would allow viewers to play with physical artifacts, which is a more streamlined way of storing data and a more interactive way of accessing the data. Upon entry, viewers are given an RFID token that is related to one of the 57 videos in the house. An RFID scanner in the doorframe of the house sends information into the token regarding what videos the viewer has watched when the viewer enters and exits the house. When the token is placed on the table, viewers are able to access the references for videos watched in the house, and the general archive after those references are watched.

More experience storyboarding and wire framing of tabletop interface

I wanted to prototype this experience using MESH blocks. I was able to use a position sensor and connect it to a light block, which was a more accurate representation of my interaction compared to when I used LittleBits. This circuit simulates what would happen if the viewer walked up to the table, and placed their token on the tabletop (tabletop would light up and show interface).

Using MESH blocks and the MESH app to create a sensor based interaction

While this interaction seemed a bit more meaningful, I decided to sketch out some wireframes and mock up some screens using Sketch and InVision, since that was more telling of what the interface would look like and how the interaction might be simulated.

First round of Sketch prototype screens

While these screens were a good first step, I struggled with too many signals on a page (e.g. scroll left, exit out of the page), and figuring out how to link the pages together. As such, I needed to come up with a better way of creating a screen based experience.

Daphne and Matt also brought up relevant points about my physical model, such as getting a better understanding of the scale of my piece. For example, using a tape measure and tape to physically map out the size of the house, and translate that into the correct proportions within my model and SketchUp model to get a better sense of the space I can work with in the Miller ICA.

Updated in progress visualisations, parti diagram, physical model, SketchUp model