In addition to exploring how mobile technologies may be assistive within the Davis Museum, I’m part of a team this semester that is investigating how a Microsoft Surface in the museum’s lobby could improve visitors’ experiences. The problems we seek to address with our design are that students (a) find the lobby generally unwelcoming, (b) don’t realize that the museum is their space, and (c) appear to be the most attracted to social and personal experiences in the museum. By developing an application for the Microsoft Surface and installing it within the Davis Museum’s lobby, we seek to engage students who can see the Surface through the lobby’s glass walls, and who pass by them while they head towards the galleries.

Our application, in its native state, will display a word cloud including the names of the galleries’ themes. By adding one of three tokens (time period, materials, and geographical origins), the user can modify the word cloud to display the names of such subgroups. Upon dragging a subgroup out of the word cloud, a cluster of related images populates around the word, which the user can drag out of the cluster to look at individually. When dragged out, the image automatically enlarges. When the user selects it, a prompt slides out next to the image asking them to think critically about the piece in one way or another. To respond, the user may “finger paint” directly on the image or in a space below the question, and submit it to the database. Afterwards, they can view others’ responses as well.

In these ways, we believe users will feel personally connected to the works and invited to think about them analytically before and after they actually enter the galleries. Furthermore, they’ll feel connected to the other visitors of the museum, and as if they are part of an active and analytical community. By doing so, we believe our application is ideal for humanizing the lobby space, making the Davis Museum a more social space, and extending the learning of visitors through every stage of their visit and even beyond the museum’s doors.

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