Design Challenge

The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA tasked us to explore how to “employ emerging technologies to enrich the visitors’ experience” and deliver a concept, rather than a working deliverable, that could be implemented in the museum in approximately two years. We created a prototype that allowed visitors to hear short audio stories about the work of art they were viewing.

Design Process

MTo develop this concept, we conducted three types of user research gallery observation, shadowing observation, and short targeted interviews. For the gallery observation, we observed 110 people in 10 galleries and recorded both quantitative measures such as how much time each person spent in the gallery as well as qualitative measures such our impressions of their mood. During the shadowing, we observed 6 groups from the beginning to the end of their visit. We specifically paid attention to four aspects of their visit: interaction with the artwork, social dynamics in the group, wayfinding in the museum, and movement through the galleries. Finally, we conducted 60 short interviews with visitors at one of three stages in the visit – before entering the galleries, in the galleries with a work of art, and after the visit.

Design Solution

Our concept, the Discovery Point, is a small remote control-like device that allows users to hear short stories related to the work of art they are standing in front of. The speakers would use the Audio Spotlight technology developed at MIT that confines the audio to a precise area, namely the area near each piece of art.

The device has four buttons: Play, Back, Forward and MailHome. Visitors press the big Play button to hear a short story (approximately 30 seconds) related to the item. When the story is over, they can hear another story by pressing the Play button or the Forward button. Each piece of art contains approximately five stories of varying topics such as the artist biography, technique, or style. However, these categories are not standard across all the works of art to allow a small element of discovery and surprise as the art tells its most intriguing stories.

Iterative Testing

We conducted two rounds of think-aloud protocol tests at the museum with a total of 20 users (11 in round one and 9 in round two). The tests helped us make refinements such as adding cues in the audio about which story was being played.