Building an Interactive Experience: What Does This Mean and What Are the Implications?

In brief:

In Autumn of 2008 The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) was established - focusing on the subject of Human Rights, the Museum's content and collection is largely born digital and intangible. The museum is increasingly being referred to as a “dialogue” museum - a reference to the Museum’s mandate but also a metaphor for the museum’s approach to experience design – a reciprocal relationship where the Museum informs the visitor but the visitor also informs the Museum. Interactivity, for CMHR, involves a more complex scenario than simply pushing buttons on an interface. It involves system response to user action, provocation of interaction between visitors and between visitor types, cause and effect scenarios, soliciting, using, and managing user-contributed content, blurring the distinctions between the common pre-during-post digital museum scenario. This case study will elaborate on our approach to date as we build towards the opening of our "interactive" museum.

Abstract:

In Autumn of 2008 The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) was established becoming Canada's fist national museum in over 40 years and the first national museum to be constructed outside of Ottawa, the nation's capital. Focusing on the subject of Human Rights, the Museum's content and collection is largely born digital and intangible. In 2009 the Museum held public round table sessions across Canada visiting 19 cities and thousands of people in order to hear stories and opinions, and have people share their stories with others. This concept of a reciprocal relationship and dialogue between the visitor (physical or virtual) and the Museum will be fundamental to the CMHR's experience and programming. How will we pull this off? The intangibility of the subject matter, in conjunction with the lack of any legacy, presents the CMHR with a unique opportunity for creating a new, scalable, and efficient data architecture in order to facilitate interactive experiences and rich dialogue.

The CMHR has often been described as an “idea museum” in that its focus is not based on a museum collection. While this persists, the museum is also increasingly being referred to as a “dialogue” museum in reference to the Museum’s mandate but also as a metaphor for the museum’s approach to experience design – a reciprocal relationship where the Museum informs the visitor but the visitor also informs the Museum. Interactivity, as per CMHR’s perspective, involves a more complex scenario than simply pushing buttons on an interface. It involves situations like system response to user action, provocation of interaction between visitors and between visitor types, cause and effect scenarios, soliciting, using, and managing user contributed content, blurring the distinctions between the common pre-during-post digital museum scenario, and more.

This case study will elaborate our approach and actions to date as we build towards the opening of our "interactive" museum.

Author:

 

Corey Timpson is responsible for managing Design and New Media initiatives related to, and supporting all aspects of, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) — collections, research, exhibits, and corporate. Corey's primary focus at the CMHR is to facilitate interactions and dialogue between and among visitors (on-line and in-house) through the use of new media and digital technology relying on sustainable, scalable, and efficient data and interaction models.

 

Corey has a B.A. in Law from Carleton University and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Interactive Multimedia from Algonquin College. Prior to accepting his role at the CMHR, Corey spent 8 years at the Canadian Heritage Information Network and the Virtual Museum of Canada where he led the interface and creative design, information architecture, and web management teams.

 

Authoring papers, presentations, and participating at conferences, Corey is an active collaborator in the new media and digital discourse within the cultural domain.