Studying a community of volunteers at a historic cemetery to inspire interaction concepts

We present empirical fieldwork conducted in collaboration with a local community of cultural heritage volunteers at the historic Sheffield General Cemetery, in order to inform and realise concepts for interactive installations. The volunteers take care of the site and of its visitors and perform a variety of important activities for preservation and outreach. With the purpose of co-envisioning and co-designing novel technological interventions to support the volunteers in engaging visitors and communicating the heritage site to the public, we have embarked on collaboration with the Cemetery Trust. In this paper we describe a particular study, conducted to glean an understanding of the volunteers' practices, concerns and strategies. We conclude by presenting a number of interaction concepts developed as part of co-design workshops and brainstorming sessions involving the volunteers that address their concerns and needs.

[1]  Mary Beth Rosson,et al.  Enhancing community awareness of and participation in local heritage with a mobile application , 2014, CSCW.

[3]  Eva Hornecker,et al.  Exploring historical cemeteries as a site for technological augmentation , 2014 .

[4]  Christopher A. Le Dantec,et al.  Community historians: scaffolding community engagement through culture and heritage , 2014, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[5]  Stephen A. Brewster,et al.  Shaking the dead: multimodal location based experiences for un-stewarded archaeological sites , 2012, NordiCHI.

[6]  Ryohei Nakatsu,et al.  Mobile augmented reality for Bukit Brown cemetery navigation , 2012, VRCAI '12.

[7]  Kay Neville,et al.  Crowdsourcing Our Cultural Heritage , 2015, Online Inf. Rev..

[8]  Tommi Ilmonen,et al.  Tranquil interaction: exploring archaic culture in the Kylä installation , 2007, DPPI.

[9]  T. Kvan,et al.  New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage , 2007 .

[10]  Holger Schnädelbach,et al.  Embedded Mixed Reality Environments , 2010, The Engineering of Mixed Reality Systems.

[11]  T. Ingold,et al.  Ways of walking : ethnography and practice on foot , 2008 .

[12]  Matthew Chalmers,et al.  Lessons from the lighthouse: collaboration in a shared mixed reality system , 2003, CHI '03.

[13]  Steve Benford,et al.  Assembling History: Achieving Coherent Experiences with Diverse Technologies , 2003, ECSCW.

[14]  Zhongyuan Zhang.  What Is Lived Space , 2006 .

[15]  Mads Bødker,et al.  Tourism Sociabilities and Place: Challenges and Opportunities for Design , 2013 .

[16]  Luigina Ciolfi,et al.  Designing for meaningful visitor engagement at a living history museum , 2012, NordiCHI.

[17]  Peter Gall Krogh,et al.  Tactics for homing in mobile life: a fieldwalk study of extremely mobile people , 2010, Mobile HCI.

[18]  Yvonne Rogers,et al.  Understanding sustained community engagement: a case study in heritage preservation in rural argentina , 2014, CHI.

[19]  Gabriela Avram,et al.  Interactive exhibitions design: what can we learn from cultural heritage professionals? , 2014, NordiCHI.

[20]  L. Palen,et al.  The Social Production of Heritage through Cross‐media Interaction: Making Place for Place‐making , 2008 .

[21]  S. Coleman,et al.  Locating the field : space, place and context in anthropology , 2006 .

[22]  M. Myers,et al.  ‘Walk with me, talk with me’ 1 : the art of conversive wayfinding , 2010 .

[23]  Nicola J. Bidwell.  Walking together to design , 2012, INTR.

[24]  Robin Goldberg,et al.  Exploring historical, social and natural heritage: challenges for tangible interaction design at Sheffield General Cemetery , 2013 .

[25]  Jay David Bolter,et al.  Presence and the Aura of Meaningful Places , 2004 .

[26]  Blair MacIntyre,et al.  Exploring spatial narratives and mixed reality experiences in Oakland Cemetery , 2005, ACE '05.

[27]  Albrecht Schmidt,et al.  Integrating material and digital: a new way for cultural heritage , 2013, INTR.