Designing The Invisible Interaction of Museum Collections

User experience designers usually design for something tangible or something we can see. We design digital interactions for websites and mobile applications. We also deal with services when we design bank services. The interaction we design can also involve physical objects, like the design button interface for a TV monitor. But last year, we, Somia Customer Experience got to experience designing something invisible: the interaction between visitors and the museum collections. I’ll explain further why I said the interaction is invisible.

For context, The Indonesia Heritage Agency engaged us to create visitor experience guidelines for Museum Nasional. As part of the project, we observed and interviewed the museum’s current visitors and non-visitors (particularly those who are into museums other than Museum Nasional) to see how they navigate and interact with the collections.

Intercepting Museum Nasional’s visitor to understand their perception & interaction with the museum collections.

Interacting beyond the collection

From the sessions with the museum visitors, we understood one thing: They are not interacting with the actual objects of the collection. The collections are only used as a medium to interact with the stories that they represent. Interestingly, there are different invisible aspects of the collection's stories that we need to consider if we want to design a relevant experience for the visitors.

Designing for the Invisible Past Life

Visitors use the collections as a gate to understand how people in the past used to live, not simply about the collection details. The materials, dates, and locations found become secondary to knowing how exactly the people used the collection and the life surrounding it. For example, when they see the piggy bank from the Majapahit era, they want to know what kind of money people in the past used, who saved money in the piggy bank, for what purposes people saved in the past, and did they have the same motivation as us in the modern day. The collections become like time machines that throw people back in time.

Piggy bank collection from the Majapahit era. Source: Somia Customer Experience’s documentation.

Visitors are trying to see the connection between past and present. So when we design interaction for these collections, we need to understand which past life we need to bring to life and not simply display the collections as is. This connection between past and present is critical when we want to design interaction with collections that are distant from the modern day. For example, when we talked with visitors interacting with the Kedukan Bukit collection, they struggled to see why the stone was in the museum in the first place, even though the artifact was the first proof of the Sriwijaya Kingdom. The visitors were missing that writing in stone at that particular time could only be done by an established authority, so the stone acts like a ‘birth certificate.’ Only by explaining the relevancy of the stone in the modern day can visitors understand its importance.

Kedukan Bukit, one of the written proofs of the Kingdom of Sriwijaya. Source: Somia Customer Experience’s documentation.

Designing for the Invisible Historical Significance

Collections in the museum each have their own stories and values. Some of them have a bigger historical significance than the others. The collection could be a personal belonging of an important historical figure, regalia of a past kingdom, or, just like previously mentioned, as proof of existence. The historical significance, however, is sometimes not directly represented by the collection's visual appearance. Historically significant collections may not always be visually interesting. It could be due to the collection's condition, size, or generic shape.

The Saddle of Pangeran Diponegoro. Source: Museum Nasional.

Look at Pangeran Diponegoro's saddle, which was his belonging during his fight against the Dutch between 1825 and 1830. Pangeran Diponegoro wore the saddle while running from the Dutch pursuit. In terms of visuals, although it looks slightly more luxurious than a regular saddle, it is still only a saddle. The collection alone could not tell the visitors the important figure of Pangeran Diponegoro. When designing visitor interactions with museum collections that hold significant historical value, it is crucial to create an experience that allows visitors to comprehend the importance of the artifacts, in this case, the Pangeran Diponegoro and story of pursuit. This can be achieved through various means, such as the way we display the collections, the lighting we use, their placement, and, of course, by visualizing the stories alongside the collection.

Designing for the Invisible Connection Between Collections

How many of us feel tired or overwhelmed after exploring a heritage-based museum? Aside from the actual physical activity of moving from different areas of the museum, it is probably because we are absorbing a large amount of new information from the collections. A museum usually has a large number of collections to show. Each collection has many stories for visitors to learn. Meanwhile, humans have a limited capacity to absorb new information within a time.

Prototyping the interaction of collections. We highlighted some of the important stories of some collections and evaluated the visitor’s reception of it. Source: Somia Customer Experience’s documentation.

From our observations and prototyping activity, we learned that visitors usually can only remember one particular piece of information from one collection, even if they are presented with many. We also learned that after they finished exploring, they tried to connect one collection to another to make sense of what they learned. Museums usually already have a certain exhibition theme and pick collections according to the narration they want to tell. However, with the visitor’s limited capacity, we need to be aware of which information we want the visitors to learn from each collection and the connection between one to another. This is to ensure that the narration we want to convey in the exhibition can be understood, reducing the misinterpretation of the set of collections.

Each collection’s information should only have one focal point that is tied to the overall narration of the exhibition. Source: Somia Customer Experience’s documentation.

This limited capacity of visitors to process information creates an untapped opportunity for the museum. Since one collection could have many stories that we only need to pick one, from time to time, we can create different exhibitions from the same set of collections with different focal point narration for each collection. This can create a perception of novelty that may attract visitors to revisit the museum for new exhibitions.

The next time we get to design interaction for a heritage-based museum’s collections, remember that what we design for stories that the physical object represents. The object is only a gate for visitors to understand the past life and its historical significance. Let’s make sure we plan all the connections between each collection in one exhibition so visitors can easily grasp what we are trying to say.

Uka is a Lead Design Consultant at Somia CX. In his spare time, he can be found trying out new coffee beans he ordered from his favorite roastery or trying to establish two-way communication with the neighborhood felines.

You can find out more about his writing here or visit his LinkedIn page to learn more and connect with him.

In the past, Somia CX also did an independent exploration project about museums. You can read the article here.