Museum experience of blind visitor

Related documents

This document is a result from a design walk through with a blind user

Protocol of description during museum visit

1) Tell us about your museum experiences

• not gone recently

• gone to two museums before in other countries

• reasonably good experience

  • group of 20 people

  • art museum

  • historical sites with exhibits

  • people in the group were interested in talking about the exhibits and were good communicators

  • group members gave descriptions of artifacts "blue background, tree with green..."

  • More important is what the artifact does to the mind - the experience of visiting a museum

  • Needs an experiential component (tone in a persons voice, not only a screen reader giving the facts)

    • instead of simple descriptions, details that are meaningful and exciting (e.g. sun light, colours, shadows, people and interactions, interesting facts, history) enhance the experience of the object

    • interaction with other museum visitors

    • context of artifact is very important and not only the plain experience

    • tone, presentation, background, meaning, atmosphere (lighting), spatial arrangement (how object relates to other objects)

    • convey the experience that the museum intended to carry over to the visitor and translate into words - what is the meaning meant to be conveyed by the artifact

    • also important for a webpage

    • hard to capture art in a picture and carry the meaning without a narrative and explanation

2) Do you ever look at museum websites

• no, but willing to look at websites and give recommendations

• they're uninteresting and probably not experiential

• Looking at a wikipedia or good encyclopedia article might actually give more meaningful information about a piece of art than a museum website would*

3) Did you in a museum ever take advantage of audio guides or other tech

• No, visit was always in a group with a guide that could provide far more context and background

• Living tour guides are a key part of a good visitor experience. There should be a framwork for assessing existing systems and human guides and extract information carried to be able to have. Important to evaluate audio guides that are currently available and compare it with a tour given by a living person. This would help determine the kinds of information that CMS' & audio guides, etc. need to carry for good visitor experience.

• relation of items in physical space

• why is curator placing items and how

• what is the atmosphere and story of the exhibition in a room