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