Scaffolding Visitors Experience of Technology

This paper is concerned with visitors' experience of new technologies in museums. We have designed and evaluated a technology-intensive installation at the Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. The Museum aims at providing visitors with a comprehensive view of the history of technology and technical innovations. The science center, the `educational wing' of the museum, focuses on participation and physical interaction. Two important aims are to extend as much as possible the visitors' sensorial experience and allow for reflection. The exhibits include multi-modal interactive installations about scientific and technological themes (e.g. physics, human perception and natural history). We have, rather than adopting a traditional narrative-didactic approach to exhibition design, attempted to provide a forum that relies on implicit design features to encourage dialogue and discussion. The Well of Inventions http://www.shape-dc.org/highlights/invent.html is an attempt to provide an arena for discussion, collaboration and communication. We will describe this installation and then discuss technology-intensive installations at museums from an esemplastic design-perspective with concern for reflective, as well as, bodily engagement. The Well of Inventions has been developed within the Shape project IST 2000-26 069 under the IST programme. The Disappearing Computer (DC) is a EU-funded proactive initiative of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) activity of the Information Society Technologies (IST) research program. http://www.shape-dc.org Keywords: esemplastic design-perspective, physical interaction, technologyintensive exhibitions, museum, evaluation