Yiannoutsou, N, Papadimitriou, I., Komis, V., & Avouris, N. (2009).”Playing with” museum exhibits: designing educational games mediated by mobile technology. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, Como, Italy, (pp. 230-233). ACM. Resource 4.pdf
The authors assert that “mobile technology can support the play with the exhibits of a museum – instead of just viewing them in the more traditional way – and in this context the spectrum of children interaction with the exhibits can be broadened and enriched” (p.230). They focus on the use of mobile technologies in museum settings to enhance the educational design and increase interaction between children and museum exhibits. They classify the use of mobile technologies for educational purposes in museums into three categories: 1) meant “to deliver information to the visitor”, 2) meant to “enrich the interaction between the user and the exhibits”, and 3) “designed around a specific educational scenario where visitors are challenged to act a role and complete carefully designed pedagogical tasks” (p.1).
The authors focus on design principles important to the incorporation of mobile technology in museum spaces. They cite a consideration for the following elements: a) Design in respect to the organization, b) Design for unobtrusive presence, c) Design for engaging the users, d) design for enriching the spectrum of interaction between the museum and the user, and e) Design for collaboration.
Two concrete examples of successful use of mobile devices (in both cases, PDAs) are cited. Both are activity games: Donation and Museum Scrabble. Donation is a group activity where children collaborate in collection and manipulation of facts/info about the exhibits. Children were “asked to discover a specific exhibit in order to help an imaginary art benefactor to donate an artifact to the Museum” (p. 231). Museum Scrabble involves links between exhibits that must be established by museum-goers.