Engineering multiuser museum interactives for shared cultural experiences

Abstract

Abstract. Multiuser museum interactives are computer systems installed in museums or galleries which allow several visitors to interact together with digital representations of artefacts and information from the museum's collection. In this paper, we describe WeCurate, a socio-technical system that supports co-browsing across multiple devices and enables groups of users to collaboratively curate a collection of images, through negotiation, collective decision making and voting. The engineering of such a system is challenging since it requires to address several problems such as: distributed workflow control, collective decision making and multiuser synchronous interactions. The system uses a peer-to-peer Electronic Institution (EI) to manage and execute a distributed curation workflow and models community interactions into scenes, where users engage in different social activities. Social interactions are enacted by intelligent agents that interface the users participating in the curation workflow with the EI infrastructure. The multiagent system supports collective decision making, representing the actions of the users within the EI, where the agents advocate and support the desires of their users e.g. aggregating opinions for deciding which images are interesting enough to be discussed, and proposing interactions and resolutions between disagreeing group members. Throughout the paper, we describe the enabling technologies of WeCurate, the peer-to-peer EI infrastructure, the agent collective decision making capabilities and the multi-modal interface. We present a system evaluation based on data collected from cultural exhibitions in which WeCurate was used as supporting multiuser interactive.

Digital Interactive Experiences in Contemporary Art Museums

“…In 1933, the method of transferring information through interaction with 427 objects was extended to science museums in the United States (Bedno & Bedno, 1999). High-tech interactive systems such as augmented reality, multi-touch surfaces, and virtual reality have been increasingly used in many art museums in recent years (Confalonieri, 2015).…”

Evolución y tendencias investigativas de la interactividad de los museos a través de las TIC

“…Una de las razones por la que los sistemas interactivos se han vuelto más comunes en los museos es que estos permiten mejorar la experiencia educativa de los visitantes (López, 2013). Debido a lo anterior, los museos están cada vez más interesados en investigar y adoptar sistemas interactivos que atraigan más visitantes y les ofrezca una experiencia positiva que los incentive a volver (Narumi et al, 2016); para lograr este fin los museos se están valiendo de herramientas modernas de comunicación y aprendizaje, por ejemplo de los sistemas de TIC interactivos (Michael et al, 2010), para hacer de los visitantes sujetos más activos que puedan interactuar con exposiciones digitales de artefactos e información de la colección del museo (Confalonieri et al, 2015). Los sistemas interactivos más inmersivos han hecho posible que los museos construyan colecciones de modelos digitales tridimensionales de esculturas (Rodríguez et al, 2016) e igualmente que incluyan en sus exposiciones conceptos de realidad aumentada (Mikalef et al, 2013).…”

Social Coordination Frameworks for Social Technical Systems

“…[57] Is an app of an electronic institution for mutual support communities where individuals seek and provide help for day-to-day activities. [29] Describes WeCurate, a system to support the design of workflows for group activities, like curating a collection of images or designing a visit to a museum. …”