Mw2009 presentation

Editor's Notes

• #2: Hello! I am Mariana Salgado and I work as researcher in the Media Lab Helsinki. I will present this paper that was done in collaboration with a colleague. We have both been working with different maps together with two museums in Helsinki and I will tell you about the experience. Since the framework of collaboration was so different in the two projects we wanted to evaluate them proposing a comparison. Both bring into play the use of Open Source software that enable users to leave comments in text or audio-visual format related to the exhibition. These comments are visualized through the map components of the systems. I will present first the two cases and then the results of the comparison. The work was led by two different teams, each with a different research agenda. The proposed strategies for collaboration between design-researchers from Media Lab and the museum staff were also different in each case.
• #3: Urban Mediator was one of the activities carried out by the EU-funded project named: Innovative Cities for the Next Generation. Urban Mediator is a server-based software that provides a way for communities to mediate location-based discussions, activities, and information. It uses a map-portrayal service as a means to represent the information and complements that information with a set of tools designed to allow users to process, share and organize it. In developing UM, the goal was to experiment with solutions that would permit city administrations and citizens to share location-based information. The staff of the Museum of modern art in Helsinki, named Kiasma learned about UM and decided to see whether it could be used as a tool for public participation. They have an exhibition about the street art and as part of the exhibition they offer some walks in the city where people where discussing what is street art. The visitors were invited to document the artistic expressions and nature in the city.
• #4: In general the project did not elicit many contributions from museum visitors, tour participants or Web site visitors. The Museum staff and designer provided the first pictures and comments as a way to populate the themed topics on Urban Mediator. However, the initial number of contributions was not large, and no one took the role of “owner” or “guardian” of the collections of information; therefore, there was no one actively encouraging others to contribute.
• #5: This is how it could be seen the map, from the museum webpage.
• #6: Here are some examples of the pictures taken during the walks Visitors in Finland receive a small sticker as entrance ticket, when they go out they glue it in the trash box. This is a picture of the trash box made by a visitors, as representative of street art.
• #7: In contrast with Urban Mediator, ImaNote was designed with the museum context in mind though it was supposed to be a tool for researchers to annotate images. As a type of social software, ImaNote is a Web-based multi-user tool that allows users to display a high-resolution image or a collection of images on-line and add annotations and links to those images. It is possible to make annotations related to a certain point or area in the image.
• #8: So, we produce a map that was specially designed for the exhibition, in which most of the pieces displayed are on the map.
• #9: Children came to made objects inspire in the objects in the exhibition.
• #10: And I took the work of the guardian, being the one that organize several workshops and testing in the museum. The worlkshops in Design Museum have the aim to populate the map with creative content, that would later on trigger casual visitors’ comments. We invited teenagers that practice as a hobby creative writing to come to the museum and make poems based on the objects of the exhibition.
• #11: And they made beautiful pieces as this one. I do not know how nice they are originally in Finnish, as always poetry lost in the translation.
• #12: We also, as part of the project, invite children that played guitar to come and make music with the objects or based on the objects in the exhibition. So, they are here playing with an Alvar Aalto vase. And we placed the audio coming from the workshops in the map.
• #13: And we glued the comments as part of the exhibition beside the objects.
• #14: From the stand in the museum visitors could leave their own comment, or else from home. Comments then were on-line and on-site, in the gallery.
• #16: Thank you.
• #17: To summarize, in the map we had comments coming from staff, from casual visitors to the museum and comments made by teenagers and children that came to the workshops. This is why we refer to museum community generated content, because we wanted to emphasize that is not only visitors. Even, we invited to leave comments to the designers that have their pieces in the exhibition.
• #18: The non-linearity of the discussion - as opposed, for example, to a Web log, where comments appear chronologically one after the other - allows for random exploration without clear hierarchies, and this was just what we wanted. It allows multiple access points for browsing the content and, thus, enhances the interplay between parallel dialogues and perspectives related to the exhibition content. Both Urban Mediator and ImaNote permit this type of navigation. We could open several discussion threads at the same time. In our opinion, the map as interface provides a democratic forum for displaying community-generated content.
• #19: Both in terms of the variety and the quantity, we have a huge difference in between the two projects. Why? Mainly because while working as external collaborators to the museum, we are working in the University, we needed to invest quite a lot of time in order to make the proposal integrate in the museum. We believe, now that we failed in different aspects of the integration with the exhibition design, with the website and with the museum practices
• #20: In the case of the museum of modern art the integration with the exhibition design was a problem because the content did not addresses to the exhibition pieces but to the walks in the city. We tried putting a map with post it notes and also a stand with a computer. But both were not designed as part of the whole. One of the main features of Urban Mediator is the possibility to create Web widgets that can be embedded into any Web site, making it possible for users to use the tool’s functions directly from the Web site. As Kiasma has only one Web master to edit its Web site and to embed the widgets as needed, and because this person was on sick leave at that time, the Web pages were never finished. Some required widgets were left missing from the Kiasma pages, and others were not placed on the site in a clear fashion. It was therefore difficult to understand how the widgets should be used. We think now that we should have integrated the guides to the project from the beginning, so they could have introduced and facilitated the visitors’ comments. In this case, the designers made little effort to involve the ‘ground staff’ such as guides and guards. This could have been important because they are the ones that can, during their rounds, pass by the space where the computer is located and offer assistance. Also, the collaboration between the designers and the experts invited to lead the walks in the city was not fully developed. There was no clear strategy decided on how participants in the walks should be guided to contribute to the map, even though the walks did end in the space where the computer was situated. As a result, participants in the walks were not active in providing comments, which in turn, might have triggered more interest from Web site visitors and prompted them to contribute.
• #21: In the case of the project in Design Museum all the work done together with the educational staff while testing our prototype and working with them in the workshops to populate the map was extremely important and this is what made the big difference. This is where our strength lay. Since the Museum guides collaborated so fully with the project, they explained the possibilities for contributions on-line and on-site in their guided tours. These guides were part of our project from the very beginning; they conducted workshops at the Museum and added comments to the map, encouraging visitors to do the same. Since working at a small museum often entails performing multiple tasks, the guides also worked at the Museum’s information desk and as guards. Guides communicated the possibilities of the participative piece to teachers who came with their students, for example, or to casual visitors to the museum. This type of collaboration with different members of the staff is crucial to external researchers who often have little direct contact with everyday visitors. But we did a stand that could not be distinguish as a participatory objects, since most of the visitors confounded with an information desk. This is an aspect that we hope to further develop next time. Another issue is the integration with the Web site. Though some members of the staff could add minor changes, the Design Museum outsources its Web site design. During the time of the exhibition, it was possible to access the interactive map through a link from their homepage but. We believe that better integration with the Web site, not just in terms of the link, would have enhanced the collaboration between on-line and on-site resources.
• #22: It is not enough to present a tool and place it in the museum space. Particularly in the case of modern art museum, the shortcomings of the use of Urban Mediator point to the need for a holistic approach to designing participation in museums. * Integration of resources and practices: pooling digital and analog methods * Time and dedication for including museum staff members and external contributors * Special invitations for groups of key contributors * Prepared materials for triggering creative digital comments It is important to integrate the participatory projects with other museum practices such as publications and marketing campaigns, for example. And aim for a long term collaboration with the whole museum staff and the external collaborators, such as in these cases the designers and artists in that have their pieces in the exhibition.