The second book is the main manual – the phone actually slots into this and becomes the center of attention. Arrows point to the exact locations the user should press, avoiding confusion and eliminating the feeling of being lost in a menu.

-Kyle

The Brief

To successfully enhance the visitor experience within a museum environment, that has particular emphasis on solving navigation and learning issues. Other constraints that are considered include interpretation, interaction and contribution.

Where to start?

Before initially sketching ideas (in the end I had roughly 30) I thought it would be a good starting point (in a high level way) to look at existing forms of navigation within a museum environment.

Here is a quick outline of my observations;

This image really got my brain cells thinking, together with research into looking at the best forms of learning in this environment (cooperatively or solitary) I started producing ideas. In my case I never produce great design concepts straight away (well when I’m sitting at my desk anyway). I find designing is an iterative process consistently building on smaller ideas and sometimes even merging ideas together that gets you to the end product. That’s why I find sketching so important, it does not matter how wacky an idea is, just get it down on paper! 

The Museum Guide Metaphor

Your own personal virtual guide;

Advantages

Media rich, using sound and video (gives a platform). Doesn’t require the user to watch the display. Removes any social connotations, from having a real person. Guides and supports learning allowing you to roam, but also plan a root. Allows exploration. Allows learning through interactivity > Speaking to you, taking the interactive quiz > Future research for home (different outlets for learning). Quiz > Scoreboard – Where did I come? Respectful form of learning (man in a coat). It was designed for any portable device not necessarily a mobile phone.

Disadvantages

Single user device, Requires the user to wear headphones,  Will it annoy? – Microsoft paperclip syndrome. 

A mobile communication device (bring ya’ own)

Use your personal device to interact with the environment;

Advantages

Provides further information to what currently exists in the environment. Allows exploration. Good platform for navigation. Interactive aspect with friends, leave notes and comments (contribution). Find friends and family on the map. Allows learning, it just doesn’t simply present information. Interactively, playing games using the mobile device. Make learning fun and enjoyable.

Disadvantages

Small display and reduces oral communication between visitors.

The Magic Lens (Augmented Reality)

Imagine your looking through an empty picture frame;

Advantages

Allows interactive learning, it just doesn’t simply present information. – A platform for playing videos and audio. Allows contribution through discussing artwork/pieces. All this content is virtual no need to alter the museum environment. The user gets the device when they attend, they aren’t required to bring additional hardware. Allows 2 types of navigation, but also a platform to see more about places.

Disadvantages

Requires the user to keep pointing the device. Requires users to wear headphones

Conclusion

In the end the Museum Guide system was chosen. What do you think of it? Was it the right choice? – Looking back you may find some of these sketches ambiguous, as they were part of a presentation, some information is missing but I hope there enough there to understand the main concepts. The advantages and disadvantages are quickly copied notes from my notebook so hopefully you can understand them too.

- Kyle

So ok, I’m sick of hearing about about Skyfire, which is a free downloadable Web browser for smart phones that Skyfire claims is “just like browsing on a PC“. Skyfire’s browser is designed to “browse web sites built with dynamic technologies like Flash, AJAX, and Java, making video, music and social networking sites easily accessible from a smart phone” Now this might be a tantalising features for a lot people but for me its not the most important feature for a mobile browser.  The main step is getting something that works well, Safari on the iPhone has came along way in mobile Internet but its still not perfect. The actual viewing of web pages (zooming in and out) works great, but the other Safari features make my head hurt (because I end up hitting it off a wall), for example moving between open web pages. Why do I need to tap, then scroll between pages, was adding a proper TAB feature so difficult? The desktop browsers have proven to work, therefore adding features to their mobile counterparts like tab would keep users (like me) happy. Anybody who uses the safari browser a lot on their iPhone or Touch will tell you about the repetitiveness of switching between pages. If users are familiar with software from past experiences it will greatly increase usability, at least safari has some form of tabbing just get rid of the repetitiveness of the whole thing. Make it more simplistic instead of trying to show off your interaction technique. For me I forget about the web page I’m moving to and more about actually getting there, which is a bad thing, I shouldn’t be thinking about the browser but the content I’m accessing. Anyway, below is a screen shot taken from the proposed interface for Mobile Firefox, do you think this would work any better than the one in Safari? (check out more images)

I can’t help but look at the mockup images and think “It reminds me of Safari” – Who knows maybe Apple did get it right ?

Mobile FF Touch Screen UI design has the following goals:

• 1-2 taps for most frequent activities
• Finger taps — no stylus required
• Familiar (to desktop users) where possible
• Intuitive

For me I have highlighted the two which are most important. I really look forward to watching the mobile browser market flourish in the coming years, currently having a competitive market within safari, opera and shortly Firefox is a great thing for end users. But most of all I’m interested in seeing the final product and how close they will actually be to their desktop counterparts.

-Kyle