Immersive Museum Experience: Process Week 4
During Week 4, I had a better sense of what I was doing, but decided to make some changes to my interaction. While at the crux, my intent did not change, I felt that there was some ‘museum magic’ that was missing from the interaction. It did not have the novelty that I wanted it to have, and I wanted to make the process of unraveling the meaning of the piece more fun for the viewer, as Da Corte aims to do with his general body of work.
Thus, I decided to take inspiration from arcade games with my final interaction. Similar to my previous idea, viewers are handed a single RFID token as they enter the pop up exhibition. Scanners in the doorframe of the house keep track of what videos were watched, and when viewers enter the interaction room, they are prompted to insert their token (via text) into the corresponding wall slot. This results in the activation of the UI interface, and a ‘Visit CMOA’ ticket being printed from the other wall slot. As viewers click through videos, tickets relating to the videos print out with a corresponding QR code. When the viewer is done watching, they can rip the strip of tickets, and look back upon their explorations at the museum. After a given period of time, the screen will reset in anticipation for the next user. Museum visitors no longer have to return their token to the front desk: the desk attendant can remove the wall panel and collect the tokens.
While my final interaction does not utilise LittleBits or MESH technology, I think that prototyping an interface was a more useful integration of technology into my exhibit, especially for showing a prototype, as it communicates more about how the viewers might engage with the interaction and the exhibit in general.
Switching concepts also allowed me to create a more intuitive UI. Some key features include:
- Viewers can see what they watched, and the general reference library all at one screen. The videos they watched are prioritise and emphasise as being more hierarchically important on the screen, but the interface has simplified in general. This is the default screen.
- When icons are clicked, the reference screens pop up, and when viewers are done with one reference, they can exit out and pick another one to watch.
- When viewers return to the default screen, explored reference icons appear in grey to create visual distinction.
