Supporting cultural heritage professionals adopting and shaping interactive technologies in museums

Abstract

Increasingly, cultural heritage professionals (CHPs) (including curators, museum directors, and education officers) are becoming more involved in designing interactive technologies. Specifically, growing access to and availability of digital technology enables CHPs, who may have limited experience with interactive technologies, to create content for and integrate these technologies into their museums. With these developments, there is a growing importance in investigating how CHPs build understandings of these tools in context; this is particularly since curators aim to learn how those tools can support their audiences. In this paper, we highlight how CHPs formed understandings for integrating an interactive tool to support an intended visitor experience into the museum environment through experimentation. Inspired by lessons learned, we propose design recommendations for interaction designers and HCI experts in designing tools and resources that support CHPs to experiment with various ways these technologies could service their interpretation goals.