Place-centred interaction design : situated participation and co-creation in places of heritage

Published version CIOLFI, Luigina (2012). Place-centred interaction design: situated participation and co-creation in places of heritage. one copy of any article(s) in SHURA to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. This paper argues that the design of interactive installations for museums and other heritage sites should be concerned with understanding , supporting and augmenting visitors' lived experiences in context, thus their ability to actively participate in an exhibition. We use the concept of 'place' to refer to the physical environment as it is invested by the qualities of human experience, and to placemak-ing as the active process of connecting and relating to locations that become meaningful in our lives. We will discuss some of the limitations of existing heritage technologies in considering aspects of active place experience, and will argue how a place-sensitive approach can lead to successful interaction design whereby people establish meaningful and active connections at personal, cultural, social and physical levels to the places of heritage they experience. Through understanding place experience, and designing interac-tional possibilities that support the visitor experience by allowing people to actively engage and contribute to exhibits, or – in other words – 'making places', interactive installations can 'augment' the museum in several ways. We will support this argument by presenting a series of projects conducted by the Interaction Design Centre that were guided by this approach, and by showing how visitors were actively involved in the creation and sharing of heritage. 58 The relationship between museums and other cultural heritage sites and technology has long been under scrutiny. In early examples of technological support for museum visits, visitors have often been thought of simply as passive recipients of content that was pre-prepared by curators, educators or professional guides. However, this attitude has changed by the recognition that visitors have a far more active role: even in a scenario where they are at the receiving end of content while visiting an exhibition, visitors still actively interpret , share, discuss and appropriate it. Moreover, visitors can be encouraged to play an even more participant role by eliciting their comments, reactions and even original contributions to an exhibit or a site. In other words, visitors can 'make' what a museum or an exhibit is and how it is experienced as much as …