Crafting Critical Heritage Discourses into Interactive Exhibition Design

This paper argues how a more reflective design practice that embraces critical discourses can transform interactive exhibition design and therefore the museum visiting experience. Four framing arguments underpin our exhibition design making: the value of materiality, visiting as an aesthetic experience, challenging the authorized voice, and heritage as a process. These arguments were embodied through design, art and craft practice into one interactive exhibition at a house museum. We draw from our design process discussing the implications that adopting an approach informed by critical heritage debates has on exhibition design and suggest three sensitizing concepts (polyvocal narratives, dialogical interaction, interweaving time and space) bridging the practice of interactive exhibition design and critical heritage theory.

[1]  G. Bachelard.  The Poetics of Space , 1958 .

[2]  Hedvig Mårdh,et al.  Re-entering the house. Scenographic and artistic interventions and interactions in the historic house museum , 1970 .

[3]  R. J. Bogumil,et al.  The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action , 1985, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[4]  Stephen Kaplan,et al.  The Museum as a Restorative Environment , 1993 .

[5]  Rosanna Pavoni,et al.  Towards a definition and typology of historic house museums , 2001 .

[6]  John F. Sherry,et al.  Speaking of Art as Embodied Imagination: A Multisensory Approach to Understanding Aesthetic Experience , 2003 .

[7]  Liam J. Bannon,et al.  Shaping experiences in the hunt museum: a design case study , 2004, DIS '04.

[8]  Yvonne Rogers,et al.  NEW THEORETICAL APPROACHES FOR HCI , 2004 .

[9]  Laurajane Smith.  Uses of Heritage , 2020, Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology.

[10]  Jacob Buur,et al.  Getting a grip on tangible interaction: a framework on physical space and social interaction , 2006, CHI.

[11]  Glenn A. Bowen.  Grounded Theory and Sensitizing Concepts , 2006 .

[12]  Kirsten Holmes,et al.  Volunteers as hosts and guests in museums , 2008 .

[13]  Constance Classen,et al.  Museum Manners: The Sensory Life of the Early Museum , 2007 .

[14]  Allison Woodruff,et al.  Sotto Voce: Facilitating Social Learning in a Historic House , 2008, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[15]  Linda J. Young.  Is There a Museum in the House? Historic Houses as a Species of Museum , 2007 .

[16]  Ross Parry.  Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change , 2007 .

[17]  John Zimmerman,et al.  Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI , 2007, CHI.

[18]  Kevin Lyons,et al.  Journeys of discovery in volunteer tourism: international case study perspectives , 2007 .

[19]  Peter Dalsgaard,et al.  Designing for inquisitive use , 2008, DIS 2008.

[20]  Pieter Jan Stappers,et al.  Co-creation and the new landscapes of design , 2008 .

[21]  T. Keinonen,et al.  Three-in-One User. Study for Focused Collaboration , 2008 .

[22]  Erik Stolterman,et al.  The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Research , 2008 .

[23]  Sandra H. Dudley.  Museum materialities: objects, sense and feeling , 2009 .

[24]  J. Falk.  Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience , 2009 .

[25]  Steve Benford,et al.  From interaction to trajectories: designing coherent journeys through user experiences , 2009, CHI.

[26]  N. Bond,et al.  Museums as Restorative Environments , 2010 .

[27]  Shaowen Bardzell,et al.  Towards a feminist HCI methodology: social science, feminism, and HCI , 2011, CHI.

[28]  J. Falk,et al.  The Museum Experience Revisited , 2012 .

[29]  Vincenzo Lombardo,et al.  Storytelling on mobile devices for cultural heritage , 2012, New Rev. Hypermedia Multim..

[30]  Mj Marina Toeters,et al.  Research through design , 2012 .

[31]  Stacey Pitsillides,et al.  Heritage and Social Media : Understanding heritage in a participatory culture , 2012 .

[32]  John Zimmerman,et al.  5 – Field: How to Follow Design Through Society , 2012 .

[33]  Chris Speed,et al.  Heritage and Social Media , 2012 .

[34]  S. Marković.  Components of aesthetic experience: aesthetic fascination, aesthetic appraisal, and aesthetic emotion , 2012, i-Perception.

[35]  William W. Gaver.  What should we expect from research through design? , 2012, CHI.

[36]  Laura Cano Coca.  The Participatory Museum , 2013 .

[37]  Claus-Christian Carbon,et al.  A Model for Haptic Aesthetic Processing and Its Implications for Design , 2013, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[38]  Muriel Zimmerman,et al.  Design Research Through Practice: From the Lab, Field, and Showroom , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.

[39]  Ole Iversen,et al.  Participatory heritage innovation: designing dialogic sites of engagement , 2014, Digit. Creativity.

[40]  L. Bedford.  The Art of Museum Exhibitions: How Story and Imagination Create Aesthetic Experiences , 2014 .

[41]  Erik Stolterman,et al.  Reprioritizing the relationship between HCI research and practice: bubble-up and trickle-down effects , 2014, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[42]  John Zimmerman,et al.  Generating implications for design through design research , 2014, CHI.

[43]  S. Roddy,et al.  Embodied Aesthetics in Auditory Display , 2014, Organised Sound.

[44]  Peter C. Wright,et al.  Making Magic: Designing for Open Interactions in Museum Settings , 2015, Creativity & Cognition.

[45]  Franklin Vagnone,et al.  Anarchist's Guide to Historic House Museums , 2015 .

[46]  Alevtina Naumova.  Touching the Past: Investigating Lived Experiences of Heritage in Living History Museums , 2015 .

[47]  Franklin Vagnone,et al.  The Anarchist Guide to Historic House Museums: Evaluation Methodology for Historic House Museums , 2015 .

[48]  Luigina Ciolfi,et al.  Embodiment and Place Experience in Heritage Technology Design , 2015 .

[49]  Richard Banks,et al.  From Research Prototype to Research Product , 2016, CHI.

[50]  Daniela Petrelli,et al.  Voices from the War: Design as a Means of Understanding the Experience of Visiting Heritage , 2016, CHI.

[51]  Laura C. Keim.  Review: Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums by Franklin D. Vagnone and Deborah E. Ryan , 2016 .

[52]  Daniela Petrelli,et al.  Using Tangible Smart Replicas as Controls for an Interactive Museum Exhibition , 2016, Tangible and Embedded Interaction.

[53]  Ali Mazalek,et al.  Sensing History: Contextualizing Artifacts with Sensory Interactions and Narrative Design , 2016, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[54]  Chi Thanh Vi,et al.  Not just seeing, but also feeling art: Mid-air haptic experiences integrated in a multisensory art exhibition , 2017, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[55]  Alex Attridge,et al.  Evaluation of Touchable 3D‐Printed Replicas in Museums , 2017 .

[56]  Jennifer Kirker.  The Return of Curiosity: What Museums are Good For in the 21st Century (Thomas) , 2017 .

[57]  Daniela Petrelli,et al.  Containers of Stories: using co-design and digital augmentation to empower the museum community and create novel experiences of heritage at a house museum , 2017 .

[58]  Joyce Yee,et al.  Interaction Design: From Concept to Completion , 2018 .

[59]  Steve Poole,et al.  Ghosts in the Garden: locative gameplay and historical interpretation from below# , 2018 .

[60]  Daniela Petrelli,et al.  Multisensory Interactive Storytelling to Augment the Visit of a Historical House Museum , 2018, 2018 3rd Digital Heritage International Congress (DigitalHERITAGE) held jointly with 2018 24th International Conference on Virtual Systems & Multimedia (VSMM 2018).

[61]  Jenny Kidd,et al.  'Immersive' heritage encounters , 2018 .

[62]  Mark W. Newman,et al.  "My blood sugar is higher on the weekends": Finding a Role for Context and Context-Awareness in the Design of Health Self-Management Technology , 2019, CHI.

[63]  Tom Schofield,et al.  Design and Plural Heritages: Composing Critical Futures , 2019, CHI.

[64]  Daniela Petrelli,et al.  Design synthesis: An act of Research through Design , 2019 .

[65]  A. Galani,et al.  Digitally enhanced polyvocality and reflective spaces , 2019, European Heritage, Dialogue and Digital Practices.