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DIA Feedback Synopsis

Present: FE: James, Colin, Alison, Leah, Vicki, DIA: Jennifer, David and Amy

This meeting was held at the DIA with James, Alison and Colin present (with Vicki and Leah listening via Skype). DIA gave great feedback on the direction of the In-museum Kiosk wireframes. The team walked through the 'Featured Exhibits' portion of the wireframes, with a subsequent meeting set for August 27, 2009 to go over the 'Create A Tour' portion of the wireframe. 

The context of the wireframe is based on the scenario found on the Spatial Mapping page: See 2.2 In-museum kiosk: Printable Brochure.

The walkthrough of the in-museum kiosk wireframes can be found here: Kiosk UI design, draft 2

Clarity around semantical issues was made clear by the DIA and more concerns were expressed around the viability of tagging objects and mapping the museum space. Issues stated in the previous teleconference around scalability, usability and sustainability remain, and further research is needed in the following areas:

Visitor-use

  • Who will be using the kiosk? Will people be assisted by a docent?
  • What information are visitors looking for related to the actual collections? (ie: Artists, Activities, Objects, etc)
  • Do visitors want to combine collections or particular objects from different collections in a single tour?
  • How can the kiosk provide a way for visitors to give feedback?
  • Can the visitors rate a tour?

Spatial Mapping

  • How will the mapping feature work given the massive scale of objects in the museum?
  • What will the map look like? (3D, photo-realistic, schematic, etc)
  • What are its affordances? 
  • How does the map update itself once objects move around?

Information

  • On the kiosk, what/how much information should be given about each collection? Artifact? How will this compel people to see an object?
  • Do we provide images? Collages? Music? Video?
  • How do we facilitate visitors' need to 'discover' and 'explore' without giving out too much information about the collections?

Recommendations (by Vicki):

  • We could start developing the project in two phases: 
    • Phase one would focus only on the "Featured Gallery Tours" and the "Museum Staff" backend (how they input information) sections only. 
    • Phase two would look at developing the "keyword search" feature.
  • More work needs to be done in regards to understanding how the backend would function (i.e. FE - couch DB, with the DIA's TMS) and workflow with between the interpretive and curatorial staff in producing gallery content.
  • It may be necessary to conduct a feasibility study to see how much it would cost the museum to maintain the system and printers, etc?.

Detailed Notes (Transcript in Coles notes)

Introduction: [James]
Design goals: this kiosk is a combination of the 'Family Fitting Room' and the museum brochures

  • Visitors can create their own personalized tour based on existing 'exhibits'
  • Visitors can select one or more tours or create their own tours based on keyword searches
  • Is this intended for Docents or Visitors to use? This needs to be easy for both the docent and the visitor cause if the docent can't even use it, then the visitor certainly won't either. [DIA]

Terminology:
DIA discusses the definition of the terms below. Clarification still needed.

  • Exhibits vs. Collections: stay away from the word 'exhibit' [DIA]
  • Tours vs. Exhibits
  • Featured Galleries vs. Collections
  • Exhibition spaces: also known as Collections [DIA]
  • Permanent Collections

Featured Exhibits Scenario [James]

  • This option caters to the visitor who doesn't know where to go.
  • We assume the kiosk will be near the front entrance so they can plan their visit before they start.
    • Note: Is there opportunities during the visit for a visitor to come back to the kiosk? [Leah]
  • What's the scale or ratio between collections and exhibitions? [Alison]
  • We have 110 galleries... (inaudible sound) [DIA] [Need clarification]
  • At most 2-4 Exhibitions [DIA] [Need clarification]
  • Complication around copyrights and distribution of information [DIA]
    • Note: This part needs clarification.

Exhibit A page:

  • Don't call it an exhibit. It's one of 3 things: gallery, exhibition (temporary), or a collection [David]
  • The box that gives a description of Exhibit A is going to be really important. We need to really look at how do to describe these. [DIA]
  • It's really critical to give people enough information in the [Exhibit A synopsis]. It's going to be tricky to give them enough information to make them want to see it. [David]
  • Interesting combinations of how to communicate what this exhibit is about - collages maybe? Many possibilities here. [DIA]
  • We could have things like a "Rainy day tour" [DIA]
  • It's better to have more images and keywords - stay away from lots of text! More image driven. Maybe one paragraph. (150 words) [DIA]
  • Description of artists? [DIA]
  • People really want to look at the art... not the kiosk. [DIA]
  • They want discovery - not to have things spelled out for them. Leave them clues but don't give away the farm [DIA]
  • What about music? What other accompaniments would there be to this description? [Alison]
  • Suggestion: Have an end date stated somewhere. "The dates for this gallery is ... or for this exhibition is XX/XX/XX. Just so people know how long a collection is up for. This is also helpful so that if I don't have time to delete it off the site, people will know that it's over. [DIA]
    • Should the system just delete this automatically? [James, Colin]
  • So what is this scenario for again? [DIA]
  • This scenario is about collecting possible tours - this is about the pre-fabricated tour. [James]
  • How do you use the drag and drop feature again? [DIA]
    • Maybe be no more than 3 exhibits [or collections] seen at a time. This would be too long! [DIA]
  • There is the concern that visitors will stay at the kiosk for too long. [DIA]
  • It's helpful if the visitor is told how much time a tour is. This needs to be told to the user before they drag it into the Selection Reel. [DIA]
  • Do you offer time limits on your tours? Durations? Can you measure time? [Vicki] [Still to be determined]
  • Age appropriateness: they usually put a caution up but nothing more than that. [DIA]
  • Include on our tour "adult public tours." We still take people through them. We don't have anything that controversial. [DIA]
  • Couldn't have the 'sexy tour.' [DIA]
  • So in conclusion, this part is for the visitor who wants to do a couple of different things. [DIA] 
  • Correct. [James]

Preview Selection:

  • The preview on the left is going to be very tricky. [David]
  • How are you going to represent this map? It would be great if there was some kind of an animation that showed them how to go through the gallery. [DIA]
  • How do you properly define the path of the tour? Location? Time efficiency? [ALL]
  • I'm trying to see the benefit of coupling multiple tours? [David]
  • Maybe take objects of different tours and culminate these into one tour? [DIA]
  • Maybe a thematic tour and a collection tour together may be feasible. [DIA]
  • Maybe we could offer several maps of different touring options? [DIA]

Map features that could be helpful: [David]

  • Tours - represented by a line
  • Galleries - are a blob of different colors
  • Exhibitions -  also represented differently somehow
  • We'd like to see features like bathrooms, cafeteria, and other information displayed here.

Data, Backend and Misc.

  • Can this kiosk just work with the data that's already in the TMS? Do you need to hire someone? [Vicki]
  • We're already talking about this with our in-house technician [DIA]
  • If we went with this [kiosk], it could dramatically change the way we do things right now. [DIA]
  • What would be really interesting is if visitor's gave feedback and could rate tours. [DIA]
    • What benefit would that rating be for you? [Vicki]
    • How would that help you or what value does that serve you? [Vicki]
  • We're committed to feedback and evaluating our tours. We use whatever we can to shape our future exhibitions [DIA]
  • The difficulty in what this proposes is that there's no one interpretation for a single object. One object can be used in 3 different tours and can mean very different things depending on the context its being used in. [David]
  • We could have many different themes like "Eating and Dining", "Spirituality", etc.  We would need some interpretation of this in some form of text. [DIA]
  • Museum staff will often ask if the parent have kids and then cater to them based on this [DIA]
  • We don't have a PA system but if we did we could broadcast on the system to tell people something's going on at a certain hour. [DIA] [Clarity needed]
  • This becomes easily doable with a mobile. [James]

Create A Tour Scenario (Start)

  • Tabs along the top: Subject, Artist, Material, ... etc. [James]
  • This is where we hit real trouble: How do we manage the scope of this given the data we have for the thousands of artifacts we have? [David]
  • Would high level search filters like: Artist, Activities, and Artifacts help? [Vicki]
  • We probably need to do some testing with the visitors to see what they search for. It's hard to answer. [David]
  • We really need to do research on this because I don't want 120 objects to sift through. It will cause a lot of frustration since they won't know what they're looking for. [David]
  • Do this by gallery? [DIA]
  • What do they like? Maybe do this based on fixed questions, "Here's what you might like." [DIA]
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