Seeing with New Eyes

Abstract

This paper presents the GIFT smartphone app, an artist-led Research through Design project benefitting from a threeday in-the-wild deployment. The app takes as its premise the generative potential of combining the contexts of gifting and museum visits. Visitors explore the museum, searching for objects that would most appeal to the gift-receiver they have in mind, then photographing those objects and adding audio messages for their receivers describing the motivation for their choices. This paper charts the designers' key aim of creating a new frame of mind using voice, and the most striking findings discovered during in-the-wild deployment in a museum -'seeing with new eyes' and fostering personal connections. We discuss empathy, motivation, and bottomup personalisation in the productive space revealed by this combination of contexts. We suggest that this work reveals opportunities for designers of gifting services as well as those working in cultural heritage. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → User centered design; Empirical studies in interaction design; Computer supported cooperative work.

Gifting the Past in the Present: An Exploration of Evoking Nostalgia through Hybrid Gifts

“…Understanding hybrid structures and environments has long been an area of interest in HCI research [10], and emerging work focuses on hybridity within gift exchanges [11,37,38,69]. Golsteijn and collaborators explored merging physical and digital objects, enabling users to create physical objects that embed media.…”

“…Figure 1: Five-stage gift exchange model [38] Further work within the hybrid gifting space [11,37,69] has presented a physical Christmas advent calendar which could be digitally customised. Findings from the study highlight how a hybrid model supports emotionally meaningful connections between families and friends [37], and the potential applicability of this model to other types of products.…”

“…Gifts come in various forms; in this work we discuss both physical and digital modalities to explore the emerging hybrid gifting model. Hybrid gifting is defined as the merging of physical and digital objects to create a single gift [38], and works within this space expand on connecting or layering physical and digital materials to create new experiences [37,69].…”

The Use of Digital Solutions in Museums Today and in the Future

“…A hybrid museum connecting the physical and digital space adds new layers to a museum visit and can also invite visitors to interact with each other rather than the more traditional approach museum-to-visitor. An inspiring, creative example of this is the Gift Box project (Spence et al 2019).…”

VRtefacts

“…Donations are usually seen as financial transactions, from token contributions to large bequests [49,4]. However, donations are a form of gift, and even the gifting of simple anecdotes told with a particular gift-receiver in mind has been shown to create emotional impact [63]. Even an impersonal donation of one's own objects, when transformed through an artistic process, can create both personal and cultural value for the donor [54].…”