Supporting group interactions in museum visiting

Ethnographic study in two contrasting museums highlights a widespread but rarely documented challenge for CSCW design. Visitors' engagement with exhibits often ends prematurely due to the need to keep up with or attend to fellow group members. We unpack the mechanics of these kinds of phenomena...

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Main Authors: Tolmie, Peter, Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris, Rodden, Tom, Reeves, Stuart
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Published: 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28870/
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author Tolmie, Peter
Benford, Steve
Greenhalgh, Chris
Rodden, Tom
Reeves, Stuart
author_facet Tolmie, Peter
Benford, Steve
Greenhalgh, Chris
Rodden, Tom
Reeves, Stuart
author_sort Tolmie, Peter
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Ethnographic study in two contrasting museums highlights a widespread but rarely documented challenge for CSCW design. Visitors' engagement with exhibits often ends prematurely due to the need to keep up with or attend to fellow group members. We unpack the mechanics of these kinds of phenomena revealing how the behaviours of summoning, pressurizing, herding, sidelining, and rounding up, lead to the responses of following, skimming and digging in. We show how the problem is especially challenging where young children are involved. As an initial prompt we explore two ways in which CSCW could help address this challenge: enabling a more fluid association between information and exhibits; and helping reconfigure the social nature of visiting.
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format Conference or Workshop Item
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institution University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T19:03:51Z
publishDate 2014
recordtype eprints
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spelling nottingham-288702020-05-04T20:15:37Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28870/ Supporting group interactions in museum visiting Tolmie, Peter Benford, Steve Greenhalgh, Chris Rodden, Tom Reeves, Stuart Ethnographic study in two contrasting museums highlights a widespread but rarely documented challenge for CSCW design. Visitors' engagement with exhibits often ends prematurely due to the need to keep up with or attend to fellow group members. We unpack the mechanics of these kinds of phenomena revealing how the behaviours of summoning, pressurizing, herding, sidelining, and rounding up, lead to the responses of following, skimming and digging in. We show how the problem is especially challenging where young children are involved. As an initial prompt we explore two ways in which CSCW could help address this challenge: enabling a more fluid association between information and exhibits; and helping reconfigure the social nature of visiting. 2014-02 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed Tolmie, Peter, Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris, Rodden, Tom and Reeves, Stuart (2014) Supporting group interactions in museum visiting. In: 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 14), 15-19 Feb 2014, Baltimore, USA. Museums; Collaboration; Visiting practices; Ethnography http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2531619&CFID=514611195&CFTOKEN=70886419
spellingShingle Museums; Collaboration; Visiting practices; Ethnography
Tolmie, Peter
Benford, Steve
Greenhalgh, Chris
Rodden, Tom
Reeves, Stuart
Supporting group interactions in museum visiting
title Supporting group interactions in museum visiting
title_full Supporting group interactions in museum visiting
title_fullStr Supporting group interactions in museum visiting
title_full_unstemmed Supporting group interactions in museum visiting
title_short Supporting group interactions in museum visiting
title_sort supporting group interactions in museum visiting
topic Museums; Collaboration; Visiting practices; Ethnography
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28870/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28870/