vrijdag 10 juli 2009

a new post

I know I have been neglecting this blog for a long time. Apparently keeping up a blog is more difficult than I thought. Not so much 2.0 after all even though my twitter is doing fine.

for those of you still reading and perhaps to give it a new impulse for the final stages of my project; an update!

I am now finishing the final parts of the first half of my analysis report and I am struggling to make it make sense. In the past I have become accustomed to a more scientific style of writing; do your research, make conclusions and fit it in an intro-method-results-conclusion-discussion format. easy. Not so with ViP (Vision in Productdesign) where I am defining the context of interactive exhibition experiences. A context is the result of many factors which are not necessarily logically connected, making a linear structure within the report, if not impossible, at least extremely impractical. To break from my habits takes a lot of effort and I find myself rewriting again and again what I used to be able to write without even proofreading. And today is no exception, what I wrote yesterday evening and what seemed fine, needs improvement again.

So today I will once again attempt at trying to define the clusters which I came up with. For those of you unfamiliar with the ViP method (very much like myself) this might require a quick explanation. I will try to make it simple.

Basically the ViP method argues that all products are linked with the context they appear in. So to design most effectively you will need to define the context you are working in first. To do this you de-construct the situation making it as abstract as possible until you have a set of 'truths' that apply within the context. These 'truths' we conveniently refer to as context factors.

for example:

an observation:
people whisper in museums and don't take paintings of the wall for closer inspection

an abstract truth behind it:
(within museums) people are bound by social rules

like that.
grouping contexfactors leads to 'clusters' which generally describe main themes which are at play within the context.

another example:
several context factors:
1. people like to explore
2. people are curious about the unknown

cluster:
curiosity and exploration is a human inclination

But now its becoming hard to simplify it. the clusters I came up with of course are made up of many more context factors, (I think I have more than 100) which are extremely hard to juggle around.

Now to make matters worse, these clusters need to be abstracted back into one statement which ultimately describes the context. This statement I can then go back to during my design process.

i am thinking of the following;

Perception is Reality

but well get back to that.
In the mean time all of it has to be structured and written down, but I am looking forwards to actual hard designing.

maandag 6 april 2009

Meet the master of light

Its hard to see thanks to my really cool, but slightly bad usb-stick camera, but here's my official badge of the Vermeer center. Looking at the badge this morning I found it already tells me important things about the center which I can think about while waiting for the official mission statements. If you put "meet the master of light" on the badges of all your volunteers (and graduating exhibition designers) I guess this will qualify for something of a mission. The center wants us to meet Vermeer and persumably get to know more about him.
Tricky in the least, as Vermeer left us only 36 paintings to date (unless this helps) and not many other real clues as to the rest of his life. And while waiting for him to become Delfts most famous resident we tore do
wn all buildings that had anything to do with him in the centuries after his death.
Noticing there was nothing left of Vermeer in his home town (he
lived in Delft from his birth in 1632 up to his death in 1675 and theres no evidence to suggest he ever lived anywhere else) the vermeer center was founded and housed in a replica of the saint lukes guild (see picture). The actual building used to stand on exactly the same spot and looked relatively similar.
The Vermeer center doesn't have any real paintings by Vermeer. To see these visitors will have to travel to nearby Mauritshuis in the Hague or the slightly further Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. For this reason the center sees itself as an information center rather than as a museum. By means of an interactive exhibit spread over two floors it educates (or informs, is there a difference here?) people about the little we know of the painter. It is also the only place on earth where you can see reproductions of all Vermeer's known works c
ombined in (assumed) chronological order!
The basement
I know the picture is too dark and perhaps hardly discernable for those of you who haven't been to the museum, but ill get better pictures as soon as I find a better camera. Meanwhile my description; the picture shows part of the wall in the basement where the reproductions are on display. From left to right; Christ in the house of Mary and Martha, The procuress, sleeping maid, A girl reading a letter by an open window, and The little street. Besides these and the rest of Vermeers works the exhibition contains headphones allowing visitors to listen to expert opinions about subjects such as "who was vermeer teacher" and "what was vermeer family life like" There's also a ta
ble which visitors can sit at and listen to similar earphones which each feature a different actor impersonating a painter. In this way the visitor by joining the table can become part of a guild meeting as it were. Though there are no further interactive options, the visitor can only listen...not join in. Finally the basement gives insight into the world vermeer lived in, by means of informative panels on the walls, little bits of scattered around text and globes symbolizing the explorative nature of the dutch at the time.

The first floor
More interaction on the first floor as the exhibition continues with a glimpse into the work and techniques of Vermeer. Visitors have the possibility to photgraph themselves in a picture of vermeer (woman writing a letter), take a look at (unfortunately glued and unaccessible, but nontheless real) pigments vermeer used in his day, take a look through a camera obscura (an optical instrument used by vermeer to create the perspective in his paintings) and play with a repoussoir cupboard. This actually sound very fancy for something very simple. It means vermeer places objects slightly in front of the main object of his paintings to generate a greater feeling of depth. The cupboard takes the scene from the loveletter and allows visitors to remove elements which should show them the effect (I wonder if it actually does though). Furthermore the visitor is led through a series of informative panels explaining how vermeer used light in his paintings and how he tells stories by means of his paintings.

The second floor
This floor I get to design an exhibition for. It has to fit in with the rest of the museum of course, but we're not totally clear yet on what it should include. Over the next few weeks im hoping to find out where the center wants to go from here on and how this floor can help in achieving that. What is missing about Vermeer? which aspects of his life or world would we want to highlight? how can we involve the visitor further into the exploration of the painter?
Interesting, interesting... ideas?


woensdag 25 maart 2009

Literatuur lezen / reading literature

(for english scroll down)
Momenteel bestaat mijn afstuderen voor een groot deel uit het lezen van literatuur over interactie in tentoonstellingen, techniek om interactie mee te maken en het ontwikkelen van tentoonstellingen. Dat laatste is niet echt nodig want ik heb al een methode gelukkig maar t kan nooit kwaad te weten hoe het ook zou kunnen. Literatuur lezen heeft t voordeel dat ik nu weet dat Luigina Ciolfi en liam Bannon belangrijke onderzoekers zijn momenteel naar interactie in tentoonstellingen, en dat iedereen Falk&Dierking gelezen zou moeten hebben. Leuk om te weten voor feestjes en partijen.
Ik ben nog bezig met mijn literatuuronderzoek, maar de belangrijkste conclusies vooralsnog lijken te gaan worden:
  • sociale interactie en aanwezigheid van anderen is belangrijk voor een goede interactie met de tentoonstelling
  • "hands-on" tentoonstellingen zijn aantrekkelijk voor iedereen en vrijwel altijd succesvol
  • Interactie moet in lagen worden aangeboden, eerst om aandacht te trekken en dan om aandacht vast te houden
  • Interactie moet geintegreerd zijn met de werkelijke tentoonstelling en niet de bezoekers aandacht naar een "virtuele" wereld trekken
  • een verhaallijn toestaan verbeterd het educatieve van een expositie, maar moet wel genoeg ruimte laten voor fantasie van bezoekers. fantasie houd bezoekers betrokken, maar moet natuurlijk ook niet verkeerde informatie opleveren.
  • Bezoekers vinden het tof dingen te ontdekken en te onderzoeken
  • techniek hoeft geen bezoekers uit te sluiten, zelfs niet diegene die geen zin hebben in computers
Meer als ik de literatuuranalyse af heb.



English
At the moment my graduation project mainly consists of reading literature about interaction in exhibitions, technology used in interaction and mothodologies to develop interaction. The latter is not really necessary for me as I already decided on a method, but theres no harm i suppose in knowing about alternative approaches. Reading all this literature has the advantage that I now know that Luigina Ciolfi and liam Bannon are important researchers in the field of exhibition design, and that everyone should read Falk&dierking. Nice to know for parties and soirees i guess. Fortunately I will be attending a party tonight already to check this..
Im still working on my literatureresearch, but for those interested, here are some of the more important conclusions we can already make:


  • social interaction and co-presence of others is very important for the interaction with the exhibit itself.
  • "hands-on" exhibits are liked by everyone!
  • Interaction should be offered and designed in layers. First to attract attention then to keep people interested and encourage them to learn more.
  • Interaction should be integrated with the actual physical exhibit and not just pull the visitors attention to the "virtual"
  • Narratives help in understanding, but should be balanced as too much narrative leaves no room for fantasy, but too much fantasy might make for wrong information. fantasy helps to engage visitors though.
  • Visitors like exploring and discovering
  • Technology doesn't necessarily exclude visitors, even those who are a little technophobic. It should just be designed correctly.
More of that when I finished my research.

donderdag 19 maart 2009

bezoekers en techniek/ visitors and technology

Ik vond dit op een blog over inzichten van museumbezoekers... een voorbeeld misschien dat musea niet altijd naar techniek moeten om aantrekkelijk te blijven?

I found this on a blog on museum audience insights.. an example perhaps museums should not be too fond of technology when trying to stay attractive to visitors?

co-operation?/ samenwerken?

Een wat korter bericht om het allemaal wat overzichtelijker te houden. Een mogelijk toverwoord in expositie ontwerpen is samenwerken of in het engels cooperation. Ik kwam het voor het eerst tegen in dit artikel (engels) van Haywood en Cairns, maar soortgelijke zaken kwam ik gisteren weer tegen in dit artikel (engels) van Taxen. althans zo lijkt het. meedoen is hip maar we hebben te maken met verschillende soorten meedoen.

Haywood en Cairns hebben het over samenwerken met anderen in de interactie van de expositie en bovendien nog veel belangrijker volgens hun over het samenzijn met anderen tijdens de interactie met een expositie.

Taxen heeft het over samenwerken met gebruikers tijdens het ontwerpen van een expositie. Luister naar de gebruiker en ontwerp op basis van zijn inzichten.

Er is bovendien nog sprake van een derde vorm van samenwerken waarvan ik momenteel geen voorbeeld heb. Deze gaat over het actief participeren van bezoekers bij het creeren van een dynamische expositie. De meest democratische en interactieve manier van exposeren. Maar wil je dat wel?


A shorter post to be friendly to readers with little time. A possible magic word in exhibition design is cooperation.
I encountered it for the first time in this article by Haywood and Cairns, but I found a similar reference yesterday in this article by Taxen. Or so it would seem perhaps. cooperation is cool, but we are dealing with different forms of cooperation.


Haywood and Cairns are talking about cooperation with others suring interaction with the exposition as well as, more importantly so according to them, the co-presence of others during the interaction with an exposition

Taxen on the other hand is dealing with cooperation during the design phase of an exposition. Listen to the user and design on the basis of their insights and expertise.

Moreover, there is a third kind of which I have no good example to share with you. This deals with cooperation with users to actively design a dynamic exhibition. Surely the most democratic and interactive way of exhibiting. But should you want this?

na drie dagen/ 3 days work

Waar ben ik na drie dagen? Ik heb de laatste dagen vooral veel gelezen. Zoals ik in mn vorige bericht al zei is er veel te vinden zeker op het internet. Museums zijn heel erg 2.0 (kijk hier voor een indruk van 2.0 dingen in de internet wereld) of men is het er in ieder geval over eens dat het die kant op moet. Want alles moet immers 2.0. In die geest ook maar even een rijksmuseumwidget op mn desktop gezet en deze blog begonnen. (hoewel de widget misschien toch meer 1.0 is..voor mij voelt t in ieder geval heel geavanceerd).

Maar voor mij is interactie meer dan alles met iedereen op het internet te delen via allerlei kanalen. Natuurlijk bied het internet ongekend veel nieuwe mogelijkheden, maar interactie heeft het in de basis niet nodig. Voor dit project is het dan ook zeker geen vereiste lijkt me. Zelfs hippe moderne technieken zijn volgens mij niet nodig om mensen te laten interacteren met producten, of in dit geval museums? Kunnen we interactie ontwerpen zonder techniek die dezelfde doelstelligen behaalt of verwacht de moderne museumbezoeker gewoon techniek? Hoe zou het dan wel moeten?

een interresant model dat ik tegenkwam op de blog van Nina Simon geeft een idee van lagen interactie binnen museums om naar te streven. voor verdere uitleg en het model, kijk hier. (engels)

Het is duidelijk dat techniek in museums een centrale rol speelt bij het leuk maken van hun exposities. Zoals Alexander Zwemmes van Kiss the frog in deze thesis over expositie ontwerpen van Jarl Schulp al stelt dat museums meer en meer moeten concurreren met het internet, games en televisies waar je eigenlijk net zo veel kunt leren. "Het museum moet iets extras bieden, een totaalervaring in de ruimte, een interactie met de objecten en een gevoel van samen zijn". Die concurrentie met games en internet gaan musea aan met dezelfde middelen. Ik heb al dingen gelezen over museums met avatars die je aan moet maken voordat je begint. trekt het mensen? wie weet..is het leuk? misschien, maar t klinktt me toch nog een beetje te veel als "jeugd" naar de mond praten. Net als dat ik vroeger steeds moest rappen als er iets interesants bedacht moest worden omdat de jeugd nou eenmaal van dat soort muziek zou houden. Ik hou helemaal niet van rappen.

Desalniettemin heeft techniek natuurlijk ongekende mogelijkheden om interactie te creeren, maar wat ik me voorneem (vooralsnog, wie weet wat ik over een paar weken denk) zie ik techniek meer als materiaal om interactie mee te maken en niet als interactie op zich. klinkt het vaag? reageer erop dan kan ik het misschien concreter weergeven.




Where am I after 3 days of work? The past week I've mostly done a lot of reading. In my previous post I mentioned how much there is to find on the internet. Museums are really 2.0 or at least most people agree they should be if I look at the amount of info I already found. Everything needs to be 2.0 it seems, not only the web. With that in mind I set up a
rijksmuseumwidget on my desktop to inspire me. (Perhaps its not 2.0, but for me it feels really advanced and you have to start somewhere.) And of course I set up this blog.

However, to me interaction is more than just sharing everything with everyone on the internet via any number of tracks. Of course the internet provides a staggering amount of new oppertunities, but interaction doesnt need it to be interactive. It seems no perogative at all for this project. Even cool modern techniques are not necessary to let people interact with products or museums. Touching, seeing or sensing a product in any other way will allready be interaction. Can we design this in such a way we can reach the same goals or does the modern visitor demand technical interaction already? How then should it be done?

An interesting model I found on the blog of
Nina Simon gives an interesting approach and vision to interactions within museum exhibitions. For more explanation and the model check here.

It seems apparent that modern techniques play a central role in creating entertainmentvalue for exposition. Like Alexander Zwemmes of the design agence Kiss the frog mentioned in a very interesting thesis
(dutch so no link here) written by Jarl schulp on designing exhibitions, museums today have to compete more and more often with internet, games and television. All of which supply the entertainment and education (well perhaps not games so much, but ok) in the comfort of your home and in much greater abundance. "The museum has to offer something extra, an all-encompasing experience in space, an interaction with the objects en a feeling of being together".

The competition with games and the internet, museums seem to counter with the same means. I've read articles on museums in which you can make your own avatar before you start. Does it attract people? Who knows? Is it fun? perhaps, but I cant help thinking it sounds a lot like trying to adopt to a general vision of modern youth culture. just in the same way in which I had to rap at school if there was anything which needed to be made interesting because as a teenager I liked this type of music of course. I dont.

Still technology does provide lots of oppertunities to create interaction, but what I am going to suggest for this project (at the moment, who knows what I might think deeper into the project), is that technology should be seen more as a material to make interaction with rather than a means of interaction in itself. does it sound vague? react and perhaps we can make it more concrete.



starting a blog/ een nieuwe blog

Because I want as many people to take part in this blog and share their ideas with me on the topics this blog is about, this blog will be in english as well as dutch as far as i can manage that. for the english text please scroll down a bit further.

Deze blog zal voor zover dat lukt en ik daar tijd voor heb in het engels en nederlands zijn zodat zoveel mogelijk mensen mee kunnen denken en lezen. Ik zal steeds in het Nederlands beginnen maar heb je zin de engelse tekst te lezen, scroll dan iets verder naar beneden



Deze blog gaat over mijn afstuderen, exhibities ontwerpen, interacties ontwerpen, en museums nu en de toekomst. Mijn afstudeeropdracht in het kort;

-ontwerp de interactie voor de bovenste verdieping van een lokaal museum-

Gedurende de laatste drie dagen, ofwel de eerste drie dagen van mijn afstuderen kwam ik erachter dat de discussie over hoe museums het beste te ontwerpen zijn, wat de toekomst van museums is, wlke technieken hierbij een rol gaan spelen, wat er mis is aan huidige museums en zo verder een bijzonder levendige mondiale discussie is. Deze blog gaat daar aan bijdragen, maar nodigt ook alle mensen veel dichter bij huis uit om deel te nemen aan deze discussie. Op deze blog zal ik mijn voortgang bijhouden en mijn ideeen en visies op het ontwerpen van interactieve exhibities. Het lijkt mij dat deze discussie alleen maar interesanter wordt als meer mensen meedoen. Zo kunnen ook direct betrokkenen en iedereen die verder geinterreseerd is, alles volgen en reageren (hoop ik).
Vandaar, hoewel t niet echt iets voor mij is, bij deze dan toch een blog.



This blog will deal with my graduation project, designing exhibitions, designing interactions, museums now and museums of the future. My graduation assignment (very) briefly:

-Design the interaction for the top floor of a local museum-

During the past three days, the first three days of my project in fact, I discovered the discussion on museum design, museum future and museum exhibitions to be a global one and a very lively one above all. With this blog im going to join in with this discussion, but I also want to invite those much closer to home, that are perhaps directly effected by my project to join in and share their ideas and thoughts on my work. I will try to keep track of my progress here and my thoughts and please react to them if you have anything to add. So though its not really my thing (or perhaps so I thought) here is my blog anyways.