Exhibition Experience

Exhibition Experience

Museum experience saving system

During my fourth year of university I was given a wide project brief based on social interaction. After considerable research I decided to concentrate on improving the museum visitor experience by creating an innovative system. This would provide links to additional information about the live subject and a method for the visitor to save an interactive version of the ‘Exhibition Experience’.

As part of my research I visited a number of  museums and found that many of the visitors benefitted from the visual impact of the exhibitions. However they only retained a short-term memory of the exhibition or wanted more information on related topics which was not provided at the time. This prompted me to create a way in which the user could identify and save the parts of the exhibition they enjoyed. By creating an additional system to research material in real-time this would allow the user to create a permanent personalised experience in booklet form, to keep as a memory or to show to friends.

Using RFID technology I created a prototype unobtrusive handheld device, that could eventually be incorporated into an phone app or museum audio guide. This would be linked to either an intranet copyrighted museum database or internet links to appropriate sites to collect additional information for current consumption or further research. It would track the users route through the exhibition to give the designer additional information on the most popular zones, allowing design improvements. It would also allow returning visitors to easily identify the areas of the exhibition they wanted to further explore or revisit exhibits they omitted on previous visits. It was also envisaged that visitor information would be gained for future marketing purposes. 

Have a look at the video and images to get a better understanding of  how the system works.