=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1602/paper5
|storemode=property
|title=An Authoring Environment for Smart Objects in Museums: the meSch Approach
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1602/paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-1602
|authors=Martin Risseeuw,Dario Cavada,Elena Not,Massimo Zancanaro,Mark T. Marshall,Daniela Petrelli,Thomas Kubitza
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/avi/RisseeuwCNZMPK16a
}}
==An Authoring Environment for Smart Objects in Museums: the meSch Approach==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1602/paper5.pdf
25
An Authoring Environment for Smart
Objects in Museums: the meSch
Approach
Martin Risseeuw Mark T. Marshall Abstract
WAAG Society Daniela Petrelli The meSch project addresses the challenges of creating
Amsterdan, Netherlands Sheffield Hallam University a personally meaningful, sensorily rich, and socially
martin@waag.org Sheffield, UK expanded museum visitor experience through tangible
m.marshall@shu.ac.uk and embodied interaction with digital content. It is of
Dario Cavada d.petrelli@shu.ac.uk paramount importance that cultural heritage
eCTRL professionals are directly involved in the design of
Trento, Italy Thomas Kubitza those experiences. The meSch approach is to empower
cavada@ectrlsolutions.com
University of Stuttgart cultural heritage professionals with tools that guide
Stuttgard, Germany them through a do-it-yourself process of creating or
Elena Not
Thomas.Kubitza@vis.uni- adapting digitally augmented experiences for their own
Massimo Zancanaro
stuttgart.de museum spaces, therefore reducing the barriers of
FBK – Fondazione Bruno Kessler
introducing Internet of Things technology in cultural
Trento, Italy
heritage spaces.
not@fbk.eu
zancana@fbk.eu
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26
Introduction the German defense line along the European west coast
Within the Material Encounters with Digital Cultural erected during World War II to block the allied invasion.
Heritage (meSch 1) project [3], we are working on The exhibition was meant to reflect on how the city of
technology to support the whole museum visiting The Hague and its citizens had been affected. The
experience by fostering a vision where materiality and meSch platform has been used to enrich the display of
rich sensory interaction add to the cognitive aspects for historical artefacts with voices from the past, such as
a personally meaningful experience. There is a wide those of the German soldiers, the Dutch civilians and
recognition that such approach may greatly improve the civil servants 3. Visitors could play these narratives
both the visit and also visitors’ appreciation for the by using ‘smart replicas’, reproductions of real museum
museum’s cultural values [1]. objects (e.g. a reproduction of a surrogate tea bag, a
3D-printed replica of a Delft blue mug, and so on)
enhanced with sensors. By placing their smart replica
on hotspots on interactive cases visitors could listen to
narratives and see historical photographs and video
clips thus enriching the original museum objects on
display 4. From April to November 2015, more than
14,000 visitors interacted with the meSch smart
replicas at the hotposts.
The active involvement of cultural heritage
Figure 1 A visitor interacting with a smart replica in the Atlantic
Wall exhibition [2];
professionals in the preparation of this kind of
experiences is of paramount importance, even if they
The idea behind meSch is taking objects out of their often lack technical skills [3]. The meSch approach
cases (or using replicas like in [2]) to let visitors consists in fostering reuse over creation from scratch. A
experience objects’ shape and weight while learning catalogue of reusable narrative and interaction
about them (figure 1), to engage the visitors at a strategies is provided as starting points that can be
physical level and put information in context without adapted and refined.
the distractions induced by interacting with extraneous
devices, apps, and touch screens. The ingredients for a digitally augmented
experience
As an example, the meSch platform has been The approach to experience creation and
demonstrated at the Atlantic Wall exhibition at Museon personalization in meSch is based on a clear separation
in The Hague, The Netherlands 2. The Atlantic Wall was
3http://mw2016.museumsandtheweb.com/glami/the-hague-and-
1 http://mesch-project.eu the-atlantic-wall-war-in-the-city-of-peace/
2 http://www.museon.nl/en/exhibitions/hague-and-atlantic-wall 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK3AdQU9kkc
27
of content from interaction, and aims at facilitating the to a specific exhibit); (iii) the device: the description of
preparation and the reuse of (i) narrative threads that the actual hardware required for deploying the system
can be adapted to different visitors and types of and its technical requirements; (iv) the interaction
experience and (ii) interaction strategies that describe script: the interaction rules that govern when
how content should be released in context while presentations should be started or how the system
experiencing the objects and the space. behaviour should be adjusted to personalize the
experience to visitors’ context (e.g., a set of rules that
activate the projection of the most appropriate content
about an exhibit when visitors are in its vicinity).
This multilayer definition of the experience schema
concept supports the following properties: (i)
reusability: an experience schema defines a skeleton of
experience that can be reused with different content
and in different physical settings to create many
experience instances; (ii) modularity: parts of an
experience schema can be replaced to create a new
experience schema. For example, the interaction script
can be changed to introduce different rules for firing
Figure 2. The meSch Magazine: the starting point for browsing
and adapting digitally augmented experiences the presentation of the same content in context.
Another example is the possibility to experiment the
We define a declarative formalism, the experience same type of experience with an alternative hardware
schema that supports the description of the content set-up; (iii) compositionality: different experience
items, the available interactions, the semantic schemas can be composed together to create more
annotations and the conditional rules that govern the articulated augmented exhibitions; (iv) reduction of
adaptive composition of the experience that is delivered complexity: authors can concentrate on the preparation
to visitors at runtime [4]. This is done through a 4- of the necessary content and on its grouping according
layer data structure including: the narrative, the to the narrative dimensions exploited in the experience
appliance, the device and the interaction script: (i) the in a dedicated step. The rules for putting content in
narrative: a set of carefully selected digital content context are represented separately and can be edited
items, annotated into alternative thematic treads and by experience designers; (v) declarativity: the
levels of detail that revolve around the objects and declarations contained in the appliance section of an
places of an exhibition; (ii) the appliance: a declarative experience schema allow to specify in a formal way the
specification of the capabilities of the technology type of elementary interactions and behaviour events
embedded in the museum premises (such as, for that are available to shape the experience; this allows
example, the possibility to detect the visitors’ proximity to abstract from the actual hardware details and the
28
low level sensor logs, thus facilitating the Once they find a digitally augmented experience that
experimentation of different technological solutions. may suit their needs, curators may replicate the
“recipe” of the experience (which consists in its
The meSch scenario of authoring a digitally experience schema) and iteratively adapt it to their
augmented visit experience specific needs.
A catalogue of reusable narrative and interaction
strategies with step-by-step instructions on how to The first and the simplest step consists in adjusting the
instantiate them for a specific museum and the type of names of the semantic dimensions used to annotate
visit personalization that they support is provided to the content network (e.g. thematic threads, output
assist curators in their task. This catalogue is offered in languages, types of audience) to the specific domain of
the form of an electronic magazine of digitally the new exhibition (Figure 3).
augmented museum experiences already tested in
museums or outdoor cultural heritage sites (see figure
2). Curators may browse the magazine and take
inspiration from what other museums have successfully
adopted for their visitors.
Figure 3. The semantic dimensions of the experience schema
for the Atlantic Wall exhibition: changing the dimensions is an
easy approach to adapt the content structure when porting the Figure 4 The editing form to define a content item (in this case
experience schema to a new exhibition. an mp4 video linked to a specific point of interest, C1-Dunes, a
location of the exhibition Atlantic Wall)
29
The following step consists in replacing the content annotate the content and the sensor devices used to
material: the narrative part of the experience schema. capture the visitor’s interaction (Figure 5).
Figure 4 shows how a curator can define new content
(a narrative item) for a specific theme, point of interest When the editing is complete, the package of the
and language. During the phase of content preparation, content items that build up the narrative and the rules
curators may use their proprietary content or benefit that govern the context-dependent play during the visit
from the contextual search facilities that support the are transferred to the onsite server that manages their
search in Europeana (a virtual European library with application.
the goal to make Europe's cultural heritage accessible 5)
of content items that are relevant for the current Preliminary Evaluation
experience editing task. The authoring tool was developed through an iterative
design-evaluation-redesign process in strict
collaboration with cultural heritage professionals. A
preliminary evaluation cycle took place over a period of
three weeks in the form of a distributed expert
evaluation on the first advanced graphical mockup of
the system. In particular, 11 members of the meSch
consortium participated in the collaborative effort, as
well as 4 cultural heritage professionals, who are not
part of the meSch consortium. The evaluation consisted
in a series of small tasks that each curator had to
perform individually to adapt a simple recipe. The
curators were asked to reflect aloud on their actions on
the interface and to provide impromptu comments. In
Figure 5. The mapping between the semantic categories that total, 159 comments were collected. The majority of
annotate the content and the devices that sense the interaction the comments and feedbacks gathered concerned
context (for example an NFC tag attached to the smart replica ameliorations of the interface, the navigation within the
is associated to language and theme preferences of the visitor) application, the clarity and intuitiveness of the design
The interaction scripts may be adapted as well though and features regarding the collaborative and open use
that may require higher technical skills. Yet, a curator of the platform. Many comments were also gathered on
can customize an interaction script to the specific needs the vocabulary and terminology used within the
of a new exhibition by setting the script parameters: for interface (e.g. the metaphors of the “magazine”, the
example, the distance range for recognizing proximity “recipe”). Many comments were also relevant for the
and the mapping between the semantic categories that intuitiveness and ease of reuse of the available scripts,
as this part of the authoring environment is maybe the
5http://www.europeana.eu/
most “technical” one.
30
This formative evaluation greatly influenced the Acknowledgement
following stage of partial redesign and actual This work was done as part of the Material EncounterS
implementation of the authoring interface. The second with digital Cultural Heritage (meSch) project. The
high-fidelity prototype was then tested for usability by project (2013-2017) receives funding from the
other three cultural heritage professionals who had to European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme
perform in autonomy a controlled task of recipe reuse, ‘ICT for access to cultural resources’ (ICT Call 9: FP7-
resulting in further ameliorations. The third version of ICT-2011-9) under the Grant Agreement 600851.
the system will now be used in open workshops
(“authoring feasts”) to engage potential users of the References
system in creating their own smart objects. 1. Dudley, S. (2010). Museum materialities: Objects,
sense and feeling. In S. Dudley (ed.). Museum
Materialities: Objects, Engagements,
Conclusion
Interpretations. Routledge.
In this paper, we described a research prototype for
2. Marshall, M.T., Dulake N., Ciolfi L., Duranti D.,
authoring tangible and embodied interaction with digital
Kockelkorn H., Petrelli D. (2016) Using Tangible
content by cultural heritage professionals. The
Smart Replicas as Controls for an Interactive
approach is to empower cultural heritage professionals Museum Exhibition. In Proceedings of TEI 2016
with tools that guide them through a do-it-yourself
3. Petrelli D., Ciolfi L., van Dijk D., Hornecker E., Not
process of creating or adapting digitally augmented E., Schmidt A. (2013) Integrating material and
experiences for their own museum spaces. We propose digital: a new way for cultural heritage. ACM
a formalism, the experience schema, that is based on a interactions magazine 20 (4), 58
clear separation of content from interaction, and aims 4. Zancanaro, M., Not E., Petrelli D., Marshall M., van
at facilitating the preparation and the reuse of narrative Dijk T., Risseeuw M., van Dijk D., Venturini A.,
threads that can be adapted to different visitors and Cavada D., Kubitza T. (2015) Recipes for tangible
types of experience and interaction strategies that and embodied visit experiences. In Proceedings of
MW2015: Museums and the Web 2015.
describe how content should be released in context
while experiencing the objects and the space.