Problem and Motivation

The design problem I want to address is providing a better learning experience for museum visitors. This is an important problem because art is often seen as a selective space and is more accessible to those who have a background in art. Because of this art and museums may attract a specific population and there are people who miss out on meaningful museum experiences. From my personal experience, as someone who doesn’t have a background in art, my opinions about art pieces are my immediate reactions e.g. it looks nice, but I have wanted to learn more about art pieces. The goal is to make museums more welcoming and accessible for all people by providing a better means of learning about art.

Problem Analysis

One of the current solutions that museums use is providing blocks of text as context or information for exhibitions/ art pieces. Though this is a viable solution, there can be situations where visitors don’t want to read a large chunk of text and may not have the attention span to spend time reading. In addition, it could also be the situation where a visitor will look at the supplementary text first before looking at an artwork. The text would serve a purpose of providing learning to visitors, but the initial reaction to an artwork would no longer be that of the visitor’s. From this current solution, it would be good to retain the learning aspect of the text, but situating it after a visitor has had the opportunity to first take in the artwork themself. Another current solution that many museums employ is guided museum tours. Though this also solves the problem, there can be a scenario where visitors feel bored from being talked at during their visit. In addition, the intimacy between the visitor and the museum is taken away in a large guide group setting.

New Solution

A new proposed solution to this problem is to use technology to interactively embed the visitor into the context of the art. I’m imagining a virtual reality system where visitors are able to look at the artwork in the wall and around it would include things like a timeline that paints the context of the setting the artist was in when creating the artwork. In addition, if the visitor looks into/points to specific parts of the artwork, they would be provided with succinct information about its significance to the art piece, a means of understanding art. It would be an exploratory way for visitors to learn about the artwork instead of reading a block of text. In this way, the visitor retains their own initial reaction to the artwork and has an intimate museum experience while at the same time, being able to learn about art in an exciting way. The goal of this system is to provide a better understanding about the artwork and its context.