Learning from a Walk in the Park..

The project was based in Bunratty Folk Park, which is located in Co. Clare. The particular paper that this post is based on, ‘Learning from a Walk in the Park: Augmenting the Visitor Experience at Heritage Sites‘ was written by Marc McLoughlin, Luigina Ciolfi and Liam Bannon, all of the IDC in Limerick. It aimed to use mobile technology to enhance an open air exhibit. This type of space is markedly different to traditional ‘museum’ spaces, as the area and its contents are less structured. They also aimed to use mobile technology in a manner that focused less on simply delivering location aware content, and more on providing a novel and unique experience to each of the visitors. The introduction gives examples of similar projects that have been completed that used mobile technology to get visitors to collect information, and another project that got visitors to find out about artefacts past lives, and in doing so encouraging social interaction amongst participating visitors.

 

During the course of the work, they started off by undertaking some early field trips to:

• Gather information on how the park is stuructured an organised
• Understand what kind of info is available to visitors and in which forms
• Take note of the different groups of people visiting the attraction
• Gain understanding of the current visitor experience of it

They also used qualitative methods to evaluate the visitors’ experience:

• Observations (including video recordings)
• Shadowing
• Documenting actions
• Formulation of questions concerning the experience of the site based on questionnaires that were filled out at the site

It was noted that the openness of the site encouraged social interaction, especially when it was encouraged by the staff who were in character. Visitors often spoke to one another about the site, indicating that they engaged with the area in a meaningful manner.

 

To progress the project further after the initial investigations, the team identified themes that would allow the development to capture elements that would enhance the visitors’ experience rather than replace it with something new. The themes were as follows…

 

Spatial: the park was large, and can be tiring for elderly or young visitors, as a result visitors navigating the park might have to contend with tiredness, visitor fatigue, managing other visitors (young children, less able bodied family members) and even consuming food. The size of the park is also a contributing factor to the low number of visitors who make it to the house on the grounds, which is a walk away from the main hive of activity.

 

Information: the information available to the visitors was, in places, lacking dept and clarity. It was noted from observations that some visitors could not distinguish between different styles of buildings (that they might otherwise have found to be interesting) and sometimes got the misunderstood what certain artefacts were originally used for. This is clearly a lost opportunity to engage the visitors.

 

Demographic: older generations, who would have memories from their youth of living in environments such as the ones presented and reenacted in the space, seemed to enjoy the experience the most.  This shows that contextual information is very important to build an emotional connection between the space and the visitor.

 

Human help: ‘Characters’, who animate the space, reenacting the activities that would have taken place there, bringing both the environment and artefacts to life. This was highlighted as a very sensitive area, and two important questions were drawn up:

• How can technology seamlessly integrate with what the human support does in a way that enriches it without replacing it
• How can technology potentially assist staff members who have many duties and have to deal with a large number of visitors

Large groups: the site is not very supportive of large groups, who often tend to ‘flow’ through the area. It is hard for individual members of large groups to appreciate, or even see, all or any of what is on offer in the space due to the size of the group that they’re a part of. Special considerations have to be put in place for large groups such as school tours if they’re to get anything meaningful out of their visit – how can technology assist in this manner?

 

Maintaining character: the park was built to recreate Irish life from up to 100 years ago; obviously, visible technology would compromise the mission and ethos of the space. Any introduction of technology would have to be in-keeping with the mission.

A focus group comprising of a group of workers from the IDC in Limerick was held. For this, a selection of keywords were chosen to guide the workshop…

• Keywords relative to content of the site (what visitors experience in terms of content)
• Keywords relative to teh physical structure and layout of the site
• Keywords relative to existing information that is available to visitors
• Keywords relative to staff’s concerns and thoughts on the current visitors’ experience

 

Focus group participants were directed to focus on possible scenarios featuring the use of mobile phones. A strong emphasis was placed on ‘developing narratives around broad activities, rather than simply providing “snippets” of content’. A major issue in the focus group was the heterogeneity of the artefacts on show in the park and how any technological intervention should be able to connect all these elements, but also be supportive of artefacts to be explored individually. The focus group agreed that ideally the development would include a dedicated ‘interactive’ space, not unlike the one that was developed for the Hunt Museum in ‘Re-Tracing the Past’.

 

After the brainstorming sessions with the focus group, scenario development began, which delivered the following ideas:

• Personal Narratives: not just generic & sterile facts – the information must be contextualised to the visitor whose consuming it
• Paths & Trails: themed explorations of areas rather than ‘snippets of disconnected content’
• Augmentation: presenting information that cannot physically be dispayed, but ensuring that it will not take precident over the physical space, and that any information will be discussed in a social and collaborative manner.

In conclusion to the paper, the authors note that methods such as shadowing and walkthrough allowed them insight into the visitor experience in terms of spatial layout, information provision and exhibition content.

 

Overall, the paper was a very informative read. They highlighted that any technological intervention that they intend on developing would be very different from interventions that were designed specifically for a museum space. The openness of the space also had a considerable effect on the developments as it meant that even though it presented more chances for visitors to explore, the size of the space was also in danger of physically tiring visitors, and bringing on visitor fatigue.

The very fact that it was a folk park, who’s main aim was to re-enact every day Irish life prior to rural electrification, meant that any interventions would have to be done so in a very sensitive nature.