Designing for interaction: socially-aware museum handheld guides

Abstract

We present ARCHIE, a interdisciplinary research project of the Expertise Centre for Digital Media (University of Hasselt) and the Gallo-Roman Museum of Tongeren (Province of Limburg) which aims to discover how a handheld guide can be used to enhance the museum learning experience. Because we stress on the important role of social interaction as a prerequisite for intellectual, social, personal and cultural development; one of the main objectives of the ARCHIE project is to encourage and stimulate interaction with the museum, the PDA and fellow visitors. Designing for interaction however asks for a mental switch. At this point, we developed some design sensitivities that should be taken into account, and present a first application: a collaborative trading game.