Story Inspiration Station: Deeper Engagement with Museum Objects via Participatory Interpretation

Abstract

Interactive technologies offer the potential to support new forms of engagement with Cultural Heritage sites and collections, including the possibility of participatory interpretation and the production of polyvocal narratives that might challenge the Authorised Heritage Discourse. To explore this potential, we developed Story Inspiration Station, an interactive museum exhibit using digitised museum objects to prompt reflective engagement among visitors. This allowed us to investigate how an interactive exhibit can enable and scaffold deeper engagement with objects and democratise their interpretation through visitors’ exploration of their own and other’s responses to them. Through content analysis of system use and visitor responses (1,514 submissions) and thematic analysis of visitor interviews (n = 8) and survey responses (n = 6), we provide insights into strategies for deepening engagement with heritage objects and for challenging dominant discourses and provide design considerations for others seeking to digitally support polyvocal engagement with museum collections.