NutzungsbedingungenIt is increasingly recognized that social interaction and collaboration are critical to our experience of museums and galleries. Curators, museum managers and designers are exploring ways of enhancing interaction and in particular using tools and technologies to create new forms of participation, with and around, exhibits. It is found, however, that these new tools and technologies, whilst enhancing "interactivity," can do so at the cost of social interaction and collaboration, inadvertently impoverishing co-participation, and cooperation. In this paper we address some of the issues and difficulties that arise in designing for "interactivity" and in particular point to the complex and highly contingent forms of social interaction which arise with, and around, exhibits. The paper is based on a series of video-based field studies of conduct and interaction in various museums and galleries in London and elsewhere including the Science Museum and Explore@ Bristol.
IntroductionIn recent years, science centers and museums in the UK have received substantial funds from the government and other institutions to renew, replace and redevelop existing science exhibitions and to create new science centers. These exhibitions are being developed to kindle people's interest, and facilitate new forms of participation, in science, and often attempt to communicate science in novel ways to the public. They display a large number of computer-based exhibits. The managers and designers of the exhibitions presume that "interactives" can increase the time visitors spend with exhibits, facilitate social interaction and collaboration between visitors, and enhance the exhibition's ability to communicate science to the public.A growing number of studies have begun to assess the effectiveness of computer-based exhibits in science exhibitions -which, in this paper, we refer to as "interactives." However, we still have little understanding of how the visitors examine and make sense of interactives. This paper draws on field observation and video-recording undertaken as part of a small research project funded by the Wellcome Trust. Data collection was carried out in a number of new science exhibitions in the UK, amongst them the Wellcome Wing (Science Museum, London), Explore-At-Bristol and Green's Mill (Nottingham). These exhibitions include a SAGE PUBLICATIONS (www.sagepublications.com)