Week 8: Much ToDo About Research
I really wanted to call this post “Much Ado About Research” but that would have been a discredit both to our research and to our “ado.” I settled on a referential pun, a transgression that I hope you, dear reader, will allow just this once.
As you may be able to tell, I am hoping to breathe some much needed life into this thus far short winded, factual, and simple account based publication with a post full of misguided attempts at humor and stylistic pseudo-intellectualism. Without any further ado (or ToDo if you like), we shall begin our journey through the happenings of last week.
Cesário: The Interview
Two of our top 5 team members, Christyne and Stephanie, interviewed Vanessa Cesário, a PhD Candidate in Digital Media who works at M-ITI. We were interested in interviewing her because of her experience in working with kids and museum exhibits.
We got information about things like the specifics of interviewing children in Madeira, advice on where to take our project and what I consider to be a very interesting book recommendation. She also stressed to us the importance of working to further the museum’s mission.
The idea of the mission of a museum is something that seems like a super obvious point of focus, but wasn’t so obvious to us from the beginning. It is one of those unspoken ideas that you have an understanding and awareness of, but by nature of being unspoken is also not focused on until it is finally put into words. It really came to us at the Oceanário in Lisbon when we came across a sign on the way out with their mission emblazoned in big letters across the wall and stopped to ask ourselves, “What exactly is the mission at the Electricity Museum?” This was less because we hadn’t considered what they were trying to do there, but more because it isn’t obvious from visiting in what way exactly you are supposed to leave changed. Finally being able to communicate this idea simply has been great for our projects’ progress.
Museum Research in Museum Form
This week we had to present our research thus far to our supervisors and classmates. Rather than stand in the front of the room, point at some papers, and ask a feedback, we decided we were going to make this an immersive Research Experience.
What better way to present as the museum group than to make a sort of museum?
We actually started by reorganizing the room to work as a better meeting space. We have a very large (maybe even too large) shared office and wanted to make the space feel less uninviting to spend time in. We did that mostly by moving some of the tables we had in the periphery to the center to create a more focused shared space there and left some tables and the couch around the outside to allow for more personal spaces. As I am writing this, I realize how helpful before and after photos would have been, but alas, there are none.
After that, we made an amazing group effort to get artifacts of our research organized and up onto the wall in our space. We drew out the path we wanted our “visitors” to take through our space and ordered and placed our content accordingly. We also added some mood music to get our visitors in the right mindset for thinking creatively and exploring.
When it came time for our visitors to arrive, Jessica verbally introduced them to our space and invited them to “Walk the Wall” as one does in Contextual Inquiry. In our case, this meant adding design ideas, critiques, and other thoughts to our wall with sticky notes as they came up.
We then each gave brief explanations of our “exhibits” and then allowed everyone to wander about the room as they pleased. We answered any questions about what we were standing near and discussed ideas that came to people.
It went surprisingly well and now we have a whole slew of new ideas to wade through and consider!
