Deepening visitor engagement with museum exhibits through hand-crafted visual markers

Visual markers, in particular QR codes, have become widely adopted in museums to enable low cost interactive applications. However, visitors often do not engage with them. In this paper we explore the application of visual makers that can be designed to be meaningful and that can be created by visit...

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Main Authors: Ali, Susan, Koleva, Boriana, Bedwell, Ben, Benford, Steve
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52439/
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author Ali, Susan
Koleva, Boriana
Bedwell, Ben
Benford, Steve
author_facet Ali, Susan
Koleva, Boriana
Bedwell, Ben
Benford, Steve
author_sort Ali, Susan
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Visual markers, in particular QR codes, have become widely adopted in museums to enable low cost interactive applications. However, visitors often do not engage with them. In this paper we explore the application of visual makers that can be designed to be meaningful and that can be created by visitors themselves. We study both the use of these markers as labels for portraits that link to audio recordings and as a mechanism for visitors to contribute their own reflections to the exhibition by drawing a marker and linking an audio comment. Our findings show visitors appreciated the use of the aesthetic markers and engaged with them at three levels – physical placement, aesthetic content and digital content. We suggest that these different levels need to be considered in the design of future visiting systems, which make use of such markers, to ensure they are mutually supporting in shaping the experience.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T20:24:20Z
format Conference or Workshop Item
id nottingham-52439
institution University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T20:24:20Z
publishDate 2018
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling nottingham-524392020-05-04T19:40:15Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52439/ Deepening visitor engagement with museum exhibits through hand-crafted visual markers Ali, Susan Koleva, Boriana Bedwell, Ben Benford, Steve Visual markers, in particular QR codes, have become widely adopted in museums to enable low cost interactive applications. However, visitors often do not engage with them. In this paper we explore the application of visual makers that can be designed to be meaningful and that can be created by visitors themselves. We study both the use of these markers as labels for portraits that link to audio recordings and as a mechanism for visitors to contribute their own reflections to the exhibition by drawing a marker and linking an audio comment. Our findings show visitors appreciated the use of the aesthetic markers and engaged with them at three levels – physical placement, aesthetic content and digital content. We suggest that these different levels need to be considered in the design of future visiting systems, which make use of such markers, to ensure they are mutually supporting in shaping the experience. 2018-06-13 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed Ali, Susan, Koleva, Boriana, Bedwell, Ben and Benford, Steve (2018) Deepening visitor engagement with museum exhibits through hand-crafted visual markers. In: 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference DIS '18, 9-13 June, 2018, Hong Kong, China. Visual markers; mobile interaction; museums; galleries; visitor interpretation https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3196786 10.1145/3196709.3196786 10.1145/3196709.3196786 10.1145/3196709.3196786
spellingShingle Visual markers; mobile interaction; museums; galleries; visitor interpretation
Ali, Susan
Koleva, Boriana
Bedwell, Ben
Benford, Steve
Deepening visitor engagement with museum exhibits through hand-crafted visual markers
title Deepening visitor engagement with museum exhibits through hand-crafted visual markers
title_full Deepening visitor engagement with museum exhibits through hand-crafted visual markers
title_fullStr Deepening visitor engagement with museum exhibits through hand-crafted visual markers
title_full_unstemmed Deepening visitor engagement with museum exhibits through hand-crafted visual markers
title_short Deepening visitor engagement with museum exhibits through hand-crafted visual markers
title_sort deepening visitor engagement with museum exhibits through hand-crafted visual markers
topic Visual markers; mobile interaction; museums; galleries; visitor interpretation
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52439/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52439/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52439/