Prototyping crazy idea

One of our crazy prototyping.

The idea is that we visualize big quantity of different items with Virtual Reality technology. For example you could enter the amount of how many items you would want to visualize. say you want to see how the whole worlds gold reserve is compared to Sweden or how 1 million of sausages will look like in a pile.

The application will have gravity and you could touch and throw away  items you visualize.

Here is a picture of what we came up with, to point out it's really low fidelity prototyping.

I think it’s good that we had to design something different. This made us step outside the box and not just focus on a single idea. This was really clear when you had a great idea and just thought it was awesome and it was really hard to think of something else. We could take some key features from this simulation design and add into our route planner idea or vice versa. The literature talks about trade-offs and how to balance in ideas and features in a design. As in this idea the user have lots of freedom and can do really whatever he wants. Compare to the route planner the user is limited in what he is doing even though the goal for each idea is totally different. The literature quotes Linus Pauling “The best way to get a good idea, is to get lots of ideas.” I think this is smart in some way but it’s really just scratching the surface of what an idea really can be. Of course lots of ideas is great but what if you had 100 ideas and just started developing one compare to just 3 ideas and you started to develop all three. What I’m trying to say here is that an idea that seemed dull at start can grow and become something super awesome. And how can you possible think one step ahead of 100 ideas? (I’m not saying lots of ideas is bad!). During this prototyping we came up with lots of ideas even if the time was short.  To address the problem with lots of ideas and not having time to go under the surface on each one of them I think a general solution is necessary to find a fast and cheap way of putting something together and visualize with something real like paper of how it could really be. 

Reading seminar 2

The eleventh chapter of the course book deals with evaluation. More specifically it deals with the process of trying to improve your prototype with the help of paradigm evaulation and the framework DECIDE.

Paradigm evaluation is described in the subschapter 11.2 and it is a method for doing an evaluation on the product. There are four core paradigm evaluations: “quick and dirty”,  “usability testing”, “field studies”, and “predictive evaluation”. The techniques that is used in these evaluations are: observing users, asking users or experts for their opinion, testing users’ performance and modelling users’ task performance.

In the follwowing subchapter is the framework “DECIDE” described which is helpful for planning evalutions. The framework consists of the checklist:

1. Determine the overall goals that the evaluation adressess.
2. Explore the specific questions to be answered.
3. Choose the evaluation paradigm and techniques to answer the questions.
4. Identify the practical issues that must be adressed.
5. Decide how to deal with the ethical issues.
6. Evaluate, interpret, and present the data.

It can also be useful to to a pilot study before you do the main study to ensure that the study is well designed. A pilot sudy is a small trial run of the main study.

The theme of chapter 13 is “asking users and experts” and it deals with the different ways that you can get useful information about the product from other people. From the chapter we learn about the three styles of interviews which is structured, semi-structured and unstructured. Structured interviews can be replicated with large numbers of users with the help of surveys. Getting feedback from experts can also be useful, for exampel in a predictive evaluation is done by an expert who offer their opinions on the design.

The following chapter is about user tesing, which is a central part of usability testing. The test is usually done in controlled conditions like a laboratory. Many aspects of user testing is discucussed in the chapter ush as setting up test, collecting data and analyze the results from the test.

The question that I want to bring up at the seminar is: What are our ethical issues when it comes to our ideas and prototypes?

Kenneth Runnman

Prototyping and evaluation

Prototyping

A prototype is generally like a model of the final product. It can for example be a scale model of a building or simply a paper based model of a computer application or program. It is meant to serve as a preview of the final product and should try to attract investors or people who might be interested in the product. It is also an effective way for designers to get new ideas and can also help the designers to choose between different design alternatives. A prototype should be designed so that it concerns key issues.

There are two different types of prototypes, Low-Fidelty Prototyping and High-Fidelty Prototyping.

Low-Fidelty Prototyping.

• Doesn't look very much alike the final product
• Simple, cheap & easy to produce and modify
• Should encourage exploration and modification
• Storyboarding, Sketching, Using index cards & Wizard of OZ (for software based prototypes) are examples of Low-Fidelty Prototyping.

High-Fidelty Prototyping.

• Looks more like the final product
• Good for selling ideas and for testing technical stuff
• Usually fully interactive
• More expensive and time consuming to develop

DECIDE.

DECIDE is a framework that is meant to help with evaluation.
The term DECIDE can be summarized to these points;

• 1. Determine the goals - Who wants it and why?
• 2. Explore the questions - Find out the questions you want answered in the evaluation
• 3. Choose the evaluation methods - Choose the form of evaluation
• 4. Identify the practical issues - What can be done and what can't?
• 5. Decide how to deal with the ethical issues - Respect the people taking part of the evaluation
• 6. Evaluate, analyze, interpret, and present the data. - How should the collected data be used in the best way?

Measurement of tasks

When users test the product the main focus of the data can be listed as;

• Time to complete a task.
• Time to complete a task after a specified time away from the product.
• Number and type of errors per task.
• Number of errors per unit of time.
• Number of navigations to outside help (online help or manuals).
• Number of users making a particular error.
• Number of users completing a task successfully.

These are then analyzed to help develop the product in a good way.

QUESTION FOR THE SEMINAR:

How much time and effort should be put into prototyping to make it efficient?

Prototyping

We got a really good idea of tracking the visitors movements at the museum so they manager can use that data to optimize and evaluate their exhibitions. If we are going to prototype something like this , as we started doing at the last exercise we need to choose one method to show what our product will turn out to be.

Chapter 11 is talking about how prototyping should be used. They divide prototyping into different types, high and low fidelity prototyping.

High fidelity prototyping is when your prototype is as close it should be to a real product with a realistic design. The advantages with a high end prototype is that it could be used as a good sale argument there the user can get a real feel of what the product will be like. Thus this can also be a problem when the user expects this to be the real product. For example with software programs the code, could be terrible and bugs may appear as it isn’t tested as it should.

Low fidelity prototyping is for example when your prototype appears only on paper or some simple material that is not a real program. This could be used to see what to user expects from the program and to prove that the product is needed as it could wake up needs that the user didn't realized he had.

For our project we should focus on something in between, the author of beyond human computer interaction suggest that a power point presentation is right between high and low fidelity prototyping. Thus you get a feel for what the product would look like in clean text and on a computer and it’s not that expensive or time consuming as a high end prototype could be. I think this could be the best way to go when prototyping our product because of the time limit and non-existing budget.

We should also develop our prototype as an iterative work in progress so we can build a steady ground for our final project. With this approach we could also determine pros and cons with our idea and get a good grip of what we could improve. 

We should also use our previous work, interviews target group and field studies when we are developing our project. By now we have a pretty good grip of what the needs is and what target group we should focus on. This gives us a good conceptual model that can be the base on when we are developing our product. Thus we need to print in text what exactly our conceptual model is.

If we decide to focus on our idea with tracking people at the museum our prototype won’t need that much of direct interaction with the user, of course different bottoms and clickable stuff needs to respond to the user. We should focus on the user’s exploring throughout the program and what the user would like to see is very important here.

The scenarios we came up with last week should also be applied when we do our prototype. We could apply new scenarios with our existing personas.  

So my question is

• What prototyping model should we use and we should really put our conceptual model into text so we can lay a steady foundation to our prototype. 

Reading Seminar #2

Here are notes to the second reading seminar! I have some points I really want to bring up and discuss plus somethings I want to highlight, hence the bulletpoints.

• Conceptual model are best done with wireframes, which is what we in our team have been doing. They are really great at giving you an overview over the product. This is what we instantly did when tasked with designing the website for our conventional design from last exercise (the Route Planner thingy). (page 409, chapter. 11)

• What functions will the product perform? In the course literature we have this interesting scenario in which a travel service is discussed. The authors point out how difficult it is to draw a line and say here the point in which we do not let our program/service do more stuff. It is all about defining the boundaries. Deciding this is called task allocation. (page 408, chapter. 11)

• After the design stages we will need to evaluate our designs and get feedback from users of our prototypes. Therefore it is good to have some iterative workflow to rely on. The course literature brings up one good example of just such a workflow. The first part is to make a field study and get some early feedback then make some design changes. The second part of this is to test the design changes in some sort of usability test with users then go back out on a field study after which you will do one last design change phase. This is something we might do in with our designs. 

• The DECIDE framework to evaluation seems to the way to go. The framework consist of the following points. One main thing to take away from this framework is that the order does not matter. It is consider to be iterative and able to go backwards and forwards. I for one think this is a good starting point for the next step in our designs.
• Determine the goals.
• Who wants it and why?
• High-level goals?
• Determine the scope of the design.
• Explore the questions.
• Why are the trends as we see them?
• How is X more/less/etc for the users?
• Be specific; Is the menus difficult to navigate? Not enough feedback? Et cetera ...
• Choose the evaluation methods.
• What data do we want/got?
• How do we want our data?
• Theories? Frameworks?
• Identify the practical issues.
• Pilot study!
• Unpredictable events/consequences 
• Decide how to deal with the ethical issues.
• See ethical codes
• Privacy, etc ...
• Evaluate, analyze, interpret, and present the data.
• Reliability; how well it produces the same results under different times, etc ...
• Validity; consider if the evaluation method measures what the intent to measure was.
• Ecological Validity; this part is about how the evaluation method might corrupt the results. Placebo is an excellent example in this subcategory.

This is me! In case you forgot to check the link last time! :-)

Concerning evaluations and user studies

Evaluation

There are several ways of gathering data when developing a prototype.
Below is a general description of some of them;

Quick and dirty evaluation - Quick feedback, not very carefully documented. Done in a short space of time. Inexpensive and therefore quite attractive to companies.

Usability testing - Observe the user. Record and process every action. This type of test tests the general efficiency of the prototype.

Field studies - Natural setting. Observe the user's natural actions. Good for identifying certain needs and determining certain requirements.

Different techniques for evaluating

Observing users - Don't disturb or interfere, just observe.

Asking users - What do they want, how do they think and why? How many users will be asked?

Asking experts - Cheap and easy. Experts often have solutions to certain problems.

User testing - Conducted in controlled environment. Well-defined tasks. Data collected mainly revolves around the time to complete a certain task, amount of errors made and how easy it is to use the prototype.

Framework to guide evaluation

Determine goals - Why evaluate? Who needs data? Why?

Explore questions to be answered - What to ask? Can questions be divided into sub-questions?

Identify practical uses - Think of this before evaluation. Budget, equipment, facilities?

Users - Are users chosen for evaluation relevant to the study?

Ethical issues

Tell users goal of evaluation. Ensure no personal information is used without permission.

Pilot study 

Small study or evaluation to see if the real study is viable.

Asking users and experts

Interviews

Planning - avoid long questions; hard to remember. Split broad questions into more specific ones. Speak in a way that the interviewee is comfortable with.

Unstructured interviews

• Make sure the interviewee is at ease.
• Respond carefully and with sympathy. Do not change the interviewees' opinion.
• Analyse data as soon as possible.

Structured interviews

• Short, well-defined and clearly worded questions.
• "Closed" questions, requires precise answers.

Semi-structured interviews

• Both closed and open questions.
• Observe body language.
• Do not prompt answers.

Group interviews

• Interviewees develop opinions by talking to each other.
• Facilitator guides and prompts the discussion.

Testing and modeling users

User testing 

Observe how the prototype is used. What errors occur? How long does it take to perform a certain task?

Doing user testing

Plan the testing thoroughly. Are the conditions the same for every participant?

Try to avoid environments with much noise and/or disturbances. If possible, modify the testing space to match a relevant environment.

Be sure to inform the participants about the presence of cameras, microphones, etc.

Question for the second reading seminar; What would be our best choice of gathering data?

Parallell Design Update #1 - Conventional

Parallell Design - Conventional

While at this weeks exercise we were tasked with a brainstorming session. During this brainstorming we came up with a bunch of ideas and crazy things. This post is going to cover the first of these two design,  the conventional one. 

Our design is a website + companion app + printout in which you get a personal route in a awesome museum. The route is planned after all of your preferences; childsafe, contains a cafe, X km away, Y minutes away, history, technical, natural sciences, etc. Each museum needs to be indexed by someone, probably us, so that we might provided a route in the appropriate museum. So the design is really two parted; first it shows you which museum you might be interested in and then second gives you a more personal route inside that museum. A nice bonus is that all the information you will need for your visit in beautifully bundled together with your route thus delivering a complete experience.

In order to target people of all ages we will need both a website, a companion app and a analog version (a.k.a a printout).

This is the notes from the brainstorming session and the more detailed notes of our design.

As you can see we have not yet decided on a name yet but we do have a few candidates.

This is a rough sketch showing a example of a planned route. This sketch is made by Leif S, the rest is me (Alexander L.) and Kenneth R.

The plan is that the solution/design/website can give you a personal map of the museum based on all of your preferences.

This shows a rough sketch over the website interface and a few elements/views.

We are doing a very simplified design as our target audience for this website is extremely broad. This also has the effect of reducing our workload. 

This sketch shows the next views after our introduction/pop-up view.

Personas from 17/2 group meeting

Today's group meeting went good and we came up with 2 personas with a few scenarios. 

Tobias “Tubbe” Samuelsson Profile

Tobias “Tubbe” Samuelsson is 43 years old with no children.  Since Tobias graduated from High school he’s been working at the museum. He started working in the reception and now, years later he is in the position museum manager. He is feeling proud over his accomplish with working his way up in the museum hierarchy. Tobias is confidence with working in every position at the museum and has a good understanding of how the museum is working. Even though Tobias has never really evaluated their exhibitions other than reviews in magazines.      

Tobias faith is with the catholic church but his interest in religions is low. A big interest Tobias has is collection Trains. Tobias train collection is big and is growing for each year. Sometimes Tobias wonder why his museum isn't about trains. Tobias really like the new trains SL bought last year. Since he uses the subway each day to get to work and the new trains feels a lot bigger than the old ones.  

Tobias been working at the museum for a long time, Tobias loves his work and as a consequence of this Tobias have no children and no wife. Tobias lives in the quite suburb to Stockholm, Gribbylund. Sometimes Tobias is out taking a beer with his colleagues after work, A few weeks ago the museum hired a new receptionist that Tobias thinks is really awesome to talk with. He still feels that he doesn't have time for a relationship at this moment. In his free time, the little he have. He likes to volunteer at the homeless shelter. He is always been a caring philanthropist and thinks that everyone should have the same rights and opportunities. He likes to help with serving food and handing out cloths.  

  

Tobias is president of his local neighbor committee and strives for a safe and peaceful neighborhood. Last summer they decided to install a new fiber broadband connection and he was the one that organized the whole operation, which he is really proud of. The last meeting they discussed how to implement ramp for people in wheelchairs and how to make the garbage collection free from mice.

Picture of Tobias.

Andrea Rapp profile

Andrea Rapp is a mother of two children, Birker, 4 years old and Siri 7 years old. Birker has brown hair and blue eyes. He was a really large child when he was born but as the time passes by the other kids has caught up with his size. Siri on the other hand has always been a small child with blond hair and green eyes. Siri is a really fast runner and Andrea thinks she can be in the national team of runners one day.

Andrea makes her living from working at a local food store, Ica. She is in charge of the cheese. Andrea doesn't really know much about cheese but the only thing she needs to do is to put the cheese in the shelves.  

Andrea and her two children lives in a two room apartment in Abrahamsberg. Birker and Siri shares one room and Andrea is sleeping in the living room. The living room is bright with blue colors and the children room is in dark green, which is Andreas favorite color. They live at the third floor with a great view over the park nearby. Andrea really likes this apartment because it’s close to work and to the school where the children goes. The one thing Andrea is missing is a bathtub.   

Andrea is agnostic and don’t really care about religion. Since two years ago Andrea went through a divorce with her husband. Andrea thinks this was the right decision because they started to grow apart and didn't really share any interests. However they maintained a good relationship since the divorce and there is no bad blood between Andrea and her ex husband.

After graduating high school she enrolled university and started studying anthropology but had to drop out because of her children. Sometimes Andrea thinks about going back to university but doesn't feel the timing is right since she needs to pick up her children from school and need the money from work.  

On her free time Andrea likes to read books, especially books from the author Camilla Läckberg. Andrea also like to hang out with her friends. Lately more of her friends have newborn children and they like to talk about how their kids are doing and how to raise them in the best possible way. Even though raising a child can be difficult, Andrea feels confidence in that she is doing it in the best possible way and loves her children unconditionally.

She does most of her shopping at second hand stores where she can find cheap cloths and sometimes can be very fashionable. She really likes the vintage style and thinks it’s good with recycling. It’s a good way to maintain a healthy planet. She is specially fond of her latest purchase, a bright red winter coat which keeps her warm at winter.  

Andrea Rapp in her own Highness.

Scenario #1 - Tobias Samuelsson

Tobias started his day as normal, with a cup of coffee and walking through the museum. Tobias started to think about if people really appreciate the exhibition he created. He wondered how he could receive feedback from the visitors. They have been trying with formulas there people could give their thoughts but the response is very low and lots of the answers are not serious. What if he could track where people are going and for how long they stay at certain spots. Maybe we could use the current surveillance system to track where people are going Tobias thinks for himself.

Tobias keep sipping on his cup of coffee. Since they switched out the old coffee machine to this new one that have one specially good coffee, mixed latte with extra dark sugar and cream Tobias has started to come in early for work just to get a chance to enjoy this new coffee in peace.    

     

Scenario #2 - Tobias Samuelsson

Tobias is sitting at home in gribbylund at his desk, it’s Friday evening and it’s raining outside. He’s writing a report that is supposed to evaluate his museum. The government with Stefan Löfven sent out the request for the evaluation last week and it is due Monday. In the report Tobias is supposed to show different sorts of statistic data regarding his museum, but the only numbers he’s got are the ones regarding the amount of visitors weekly. This is a problem. The government is probably expecting a lot more detailed information. How could he get that information? Tobias starting to Google around for what data there is to get out of museums but doesn't find anything other then data over visitors. 

Tobias think’s it would be great to be able to present more numbers over how the museum is doing other than data over visitors. Perhaps statistic data over all the individual exhibitions and the overall enjoyment of all the different parts of the museum he thinks for himself.   

Scenario #1 - Andrea Rapp 

Andrea is at Tekniska museum with her two children Siri and Birker. It’s a good day to visit the museum because of the humongous rain outside. There are lots of activities for children at the museum, she is looking at her children running around and having great fun but she is starting the feel nervous because they are screaming and are too loud. Andrea is out of focus today because of this. She is feeling that she doesn't have time to experience the museum. Aimlessly is she walking around in the museum and looking out for her children doesn't get to see what she is interested in because of the need to look out for her children. 

Time flies by and they decide to go home and make dinner. A vegetarian soup of noodles and asparagus is on today’s menu. When they are home Andrea can’t remember anything from their visit to the museum and feels that the money she spent for her own entrance ticket was wasted.

Scenario #2 - Andrea Rapp 

Today is a slow saturday just after lunch. The kids are watching TV and Andrea is finishing up the last remains of her meal. Then she got this brilliant idea to spend their sunday doing something together! She wants to go a museum but does not know which one and thus need to find some information. On the internet she finds, via Google, that there are a lot of museums in Stockholm. She aimlessly clicks around to find something that is both interesting to her and the kids while at the same time matches her personal requirements. After a tad bit over 2 hours she has managed to grab hold of a fun museum and has already told the kids and they are excited! If only there was a more optimal way ... 

State-of-the-art Analysis - Alexander Lingtorp

Preface

When visiting Tekniska Museet I arrived early so I had to wait for the others. I went to sit on a bench in the entrance hall near the closed ticket vendor area. While sitting there pondering I noticed how people moved through the area. The entrance area functioned as both a central point in which you could get to all the utility parts of the museum, like the wardrobe and toilets. You could also grab an elevator to other floors in which there were exhibitions. When sitting there I noticed that on the opposite side of the ticket area lay an information wall. Over the course of almost an hour not a single person went or even glanced towards that wall. On the wall hang two large shelves with brochures on Swedish, English, Russian and even Finnish. It was contained maps of both this museum and others in Stockholm. Over these to shelves there were two medium sized television displaying various information. Some covered time limited exhibitions and seasonal events others contained essential information about the museum, for example closing and opening hours. This whole arrangement did not attract a single person, except me of course. I had not choice but to look at it. This is what my analysis will cover, the information to visitors on-site.

Function

The obvious function for the information wall is to bring useful information to the visitor of the museum. We already concluded that the current arrangement does not fulfill the intended function. The problem of their current solution is mainly the placement. The inclusion of both television and brochures are both very nice and friendly towards the visitors. Even the various languages available are plentiful and nice. They might consider adding spanish and/or french but that is a minor improvement considering the main audience is pretty much already covered with the current language selection. Thus the main problem must be that the arrangement does not capture the attention of the visitors and thus render itself useless. The things to change is the position of the whole arrangement or use some kind of attention pointer, a sign for example. It is meant to be found and used and yet not a single person except myself even looked at it. 

Improvements for Nordiska muséet

I spoke to Robert Ziherl today about possible ideas and improvements concerning the digital development of Nordiska museet.  Much of our discussion revolved around some kind of a guide system for the museum. As of today, the museum lends out small devices to the visitors. The user simply connects a pair of headphones to the device and then points it to specific checkpoints throughout the museum whereas the checkpoints corresponding audio track is played.

According to Ziherl, the main concern of the museum is to establish a good and dependable guide system, as the one mentioned above (although a new device is under development at the moment). Some kind of a guide system is essential when visiting a museum whether it is based on an audio-device, a map or an interactive application for the smart phone.

Another problem that needs an improvement concerns the visitors interests at the museum. What do the visitors find interesting? What objects at the museum gets the most attention?

There is a need for some improvement to the data gathering at the museum. As of today, the only way the museum receives feedback from its visitors is by having them fill in formulas. However, there is a slight problem here since not all visitors use these formulas, and thus the museum suffers from a lack of accurate feedback. A solution to this problem can be found by observing an old technique; by establishing some system that keeps track of the way the visitors move. Where do they move? How long do they stay at certain areas in the museum? One solution that Ziherl mentioned was by having surveillance-cameras set up around the inside of the museum. By using existing software the motions of these visitors can be tracked (see example image below), and the footage can be processed and used for improving the museum. Seeing how visitors move within a museum is considered highly valuable data. This is also a cheap solution, essential for long-time improvements.

Example of how the tracking of museum 

visitor's movement may look like.

There is also an increasing need of digitalizing the content within the museum. The museum has over one million exhibited objects, and much more books as well as archived paper-files. New, modern solutions must be found, as it is difficult to access this content when necessary. However, incorporating the museums with digital software is a challenge which takes much time.

A quick summary of the interview; the subject that needs the most attention and improvements is the guide systems. These guide systems are constantly upgraded and switched,  though not always to better models and versions.

There is also a need of a solution for the data gathering. How to best find out what the visitors find most interesting at the museum? One solution is to add cameras that track the visitors movement around the museum.

Best regards and many thanks to Robert Ziherl for helping us with the project!

Making progress

Robert Ziherl, digital producer at Nya Medier, Nordiska Museet, replied today and gave us his phone number and asked us to call him. Even though Nordiska museet might not be our museum of choice, speaking with a person responsible of the design and development of the museum will surely prove useful for our research.

We'll give him a call tomorrow and see what he has to say!

Summary of our visit to Tekniska Muséet

The visit to Tekniska muséet was very informative and we met some people with interesting things to say. Several new departments have been added to the museum during the last years, many of which revolve around digital and interactive technology or devices that depend on our senses, such as the large screens mentioned earlier by Kenneth.

However, we observed several things that could be improved at the museum, based either on our own reflections or what the people we interviewed had to say.

For example; One of the departments was old, untended and seemed quite out of place. It felt like entering a different, older museum due to its old and outdated technology. We also noticed that people had a hard way to find this department, since the previous room was under construction and some temporary construction walls had been raised, making it harder to find.

Some of the people we interviewed said that it was a bit hard to find certain points in the museum; however, there was an information desk at the entrance as well as a map of the museum. Furthermore, there are so many points of interest in the museum that it can be hard to find some of them, and the map was not very detailed and showed only the floor plans without describing their specific exhibitions.

Some information signs were poorly placed in the museum; for example, the sign pointing to the wardrobe section was basically just outside the wardrobe section.

To summarize the points above we concluded that it was rather hard to navigate through out the museum. As we split our group in three and all three of our groups didn't get a natural walk around as we went through the museum. This observation is also backed up by our interviews when they said they were missing things but as we walked through the museum we discovered the missing things.

 

State of the art analysis

Today our group went to Tekniska Muséet to conduct interviews and make observations.
Seeing as my group mates have covered most of the observations from inside the museum, I'm going to focus on the museums website!

Unfortunately every person i tried to interview either didn't have time or had already been interviewed by another guy in our group.. (There were also not that many people there at the time)

The website can be found here.

Layout and design.

When you first open the website you get greeted by sort of a slideshow in the middle of the screen, showing off new events that are happening/going to happen in the museum.
Under the slideshow there are small pictures with text under them. If you click on the pictures you get taken to their respective page.

The site is for the most part black and white with the exception of two small pictures, one that will take you to the webshop and one that takes you to a page that gives information on how to book parts of the musem for kids birthday parties. I wonder why the only things in disctinct colours are the stuff they can earn money from?

Overall the design of the site is very clean and simple. To the right theres a link to the museums facebook page and also a twitter feed (it even allows you to tweet directly from the site). However it could feel a bit 'clustery' (with all the smaller images) and the focus of the site is mainly centered around the middle.

In the bottom there's information on how to get to the museum, the opening hours & prices and a phone number and email adress for contacting them.

Functionality.

Theres not much bad to say about the sites functionality. All the links are very clear and describes well where they will take you. Theres even a way to change the fontsize and the fontstyle to suit your preferences. The search field allows you to search the site in case you by some reason can't find what you're looking for.

What if you don't know Swedish then? Don't worry, theres a solution for that. If you click the link in the top right corner that says 'English' it will take you to a, yeah you guessed it, English version of the site. However this English version has a lot less content than the Swedish one.

And if you don't know English or Swedish you can click the 'Translate' link, this will take you to google translate and will translate the whole page to your desired language.

I feel like the website is overall very good and i think that every 'type' of person will be able to use it, old people, young people and probably even kids.

Summary.

Pros.

• Good, clean looking
• Easy to navigate
• Informative
• Doesn't limit itself to Swedish only

Cons.

• Can maybe feel a bit 'clustery' for some
• Doesn't have as much contect for the English version

Emil Persson

Interview and State-of-the-art Analysis

Interview:

An interview we conducted at tekniska museet, we introduced ourselves as KTH students and asked if we could do an interview and record the session. The interviewer was Eric and I recorded as well as transcribed the interview.

E = Eric, I = Interview subject.

E: Varför valde du att gå på just det här museet?

I: Jag har barn.

E: Yes…Vad tror du att de uppskattar här?

I: Vad de uppskattar, vad jag tror att de uppskattar är grävskopan.

E: Ja, de verkar ha det grymt kul i alla fall. Är det första gången ni är här?

I: Nej, jag har varit här ett ex antal gånger, kanske tre-fyra gånger.

E: Och det är just för barnen?

I: Ja.

E: Känns det som att du saknar någonting?

I: Jag har inte varit runt hela, kanske något pysselställe eller kanske… och någon som berättar lite om saker. Lite mera tourer, liksom. Man är lätt vilse.

E: Ja, det är helt tomt här. Vilken målgrupp tror du att det här museet har?

I: Barn.

E: Och vad vill ni få ut?

I: Glada barn.

E: Grymt, tack snälla!

To summarize this interview; we interviewed a father of two lively kids who enjoyed their visit at the museum. His main goal with the visit to tekniska museet was to make his children  happy and the children's interest in the museum was to explore all the things and at the time of the interview that thing was an excavator. The thing that the interview subject felt were missing at the museum was a place where the children could do arts and craft and perhaps arrange for a guided tour around the museum.

State-of-the-art analysis:

We went to to tekniska museet and observed a part of their exhibition called Digital Revolution, consisting of three big screens projecting an animated version of the person interacting with the screen. The screens were able to do this with sensors on pillars that was behind the person and the screen, and would record the motion of the person. It works kind of like Xbox Kinect does.

Each of the screens had their own respective functions, but they all had a similar theme of birds.

For example would the person's projection be an image of the person but with wings and if the person did a specific motion would his projection fly upwards. The screens were on a big stage that was in a very large room with other inventions. When we did our observations of this part of the exhibition there were a class of teenagers that was interacting with the screens. But there could only be two person per screen so there was a queue for this part of the museum.

An instructor was there to explain what kind of motions they could do for the projection to do different things. One thing that I liked was that they did not only try to immerse the person visually but also with audio. I think that it made the experience more immersive. I think that most of the users had a great time exploring what you could do with the screens. I think that the creators intentionally made a low number of functions for the screens so that persons would only use it for a short time period. The few improvements that I could think of would be to make it more visually stimulating with maybe more colours and more details, but they went with a silhouette style on their projection wich maybe is an artistic choice. I did not try out the device myself but I think that there can be improvements on the sensors and to make the device more responsive.

A picture of the three screens from the exhibition Digital Revolution.

//Kenneth Runnman

Interviews of museum visitors at Tekniska Museumet

Today our group interviewed one person each at Tekniska Museumet.

When we started sketching the interview questions we referred heavily to the exercise slides. The example questions there inspired our own questions. 

So, from these;

" Who are they?

What do they want?

What motivates them?

What are their goals?

What technical devices and other tools do museum visitors use today? At the museum? Before and after visiting the museum?

What skills/knowledge do they posses?

What information do they need?

What do they want to avoid?

What do they enjoy with the visit?

What type of situation are they in?

What would be convenient for them? "

To, these;

• Why did you choose to go to a museum today?
• Is this your first time here? - Yes; Why did you choose this museum over others? - No; What do you find interesting in this museum over others?
• What do you find interesting in this museum?
• Is there anything that you think is missing?
• What do you want out of your museum visit?

The questions above were more as guidelines rather than protocol. We choose to target the parents/leaders of children since the majority of visitors had a more or less direct connection to children.

Transcribed Interview

Below is my transcribed personal interview with a dad.

/ ... / Formalities are cut out ... / ... /
Alexander: "Okej, varför valde du att gå på musuem idag?"
Interviewee: "Jag är pappaledig och ja, behöver något att fördriva tiden med."

Alexander: "Är detta första gången du är här?"
Interviewee: "Nää, jag har varit här ett par gånger tidigare."

Alexander: "Okej, varför har du kommit tillbaka hit i sådana fall?"
Interviewee: "Ja, men det är ju den här digitala utställningen och förra gången var det ju utställningen "GameOn"."
Alexander: "Ah, juste. Den utställningen var ovanligt populär. Så det är utställningarna som får dig att komma tillbaka?"
Interviewee: "Jaa, precis det är det. Speciellt när det är något som intresserar en."
Alexander: "Ah, jag förstår."

Alexander: "Vilken målgrupp tror du det här museumet har?"
Interviewee: "Förmodligen yngre, 20, 30, års åldern. Kanske 40 års ålder, där omkring."

Alexander: "Är det något du tycker saknas på museumet eller på utställningarna?"
Mathias: "Till exempel någon typ av utrustning och sådant."
Interviewee: "Nämen. det är väl framför allt fler datorer än vad det finns på fjärde våningen. Till skillnad ifrån de andra våningarna. De grejerna som är där borta är lite svårare att ta till sig, bland annat kräver de mer tid. Man måste sätta sig ner och ta sig tid."

Alexander: "Vad är det du vill ha ut av ditt museebesök?"
Interviewee: "Jamen, det är ju kul att se alla grejorna där upp [fjärde våningen, utställningen Digital Revolution] och uppfinningar."
Alexander: "Okej, så det är framför allt nöjet som lockar mest?"
Interviewee: "Jaa, precis. Det är det ju. Jag är ju intresserad av det ju [datorer, syftar på utställningen Digital Revolution som vi står vid]. Speciellt allt digital och med film och så vidare. Det är ju kul att se alla häftiga animationer och sådant som de har här."

Alexander: "Intressant, tack så mycket för din tid!"

After talking to the group on their interviews the conclusion we reached is that the majority of the visitors to Tekniska Museumet is either children or people with a technical interest. These two groups together with parent of children and leaders of school classes are the four (two large) groups of visitors. Thus our focus should be on them and their experiences of the museum. The group at large managed to capture these groups in our interviews. Many found, with no intention of, dads with baby carts as interviewees. We also felt that a lot of people were stressed and did not have time for a interview.

Some other points of note is that the place seems popular with children. The interactive exhibitions were really crowded and well used. A lot of the small exhibitions in the museum had some part of interactivity and thus seemed to attract children with both sounds and exciting ways of input.

Here is a picture of me.

PS: In the futuru to see how I look, click the link to get to my Google+ profile. DS:

State-Of-The-Art Analysis Leif Sundqvist

Jag undersökte en avdelning på Tekniska Muséet som fokuserade på människans olika sinnen och egenskaper. Avdelningen är en av de äldsta i muséet och består nästan helt och hållet av stora, interagerbara objekt som står uppradade längs väggarna. Ett exempel var en stor tavla, utrustad med knappar och dioder, som fungerade som ett stort ‘Whac-A-Mole’-spel, som redovisade användarens resultat på en display intill.

Avdelningen innehöll alltså många fysiskt interagerbara objekt och majoriteten av besökarna som nyttjade dessa objekt var barn och unga tonåringar. Mängden text och instruktioner var få, men tillräckliga då objektens funktioner var tämligen lättförstådda. Dessa sprang för det mesta runt och lekte, då det var rätt gott om plats i mitten av salen. Barnen var glada och deras tankar ockuperade av objekten.

Trots att avdelningen lockade till sig många barn fanns det ändå en del brister; dels var det svårt att hitta till avdelningen då vägen dit var aningen krånglig; byggarbete genomförs just nu i salen innan och skymmer en del av vägen. Sedan var dessutom utrustningen i den omnämnda avdelningen gammal; trots att det är en av de äldsta avdelningarna verkade inte utrustningen ha uppdaterats eller förbättrats på ett tag, och responsen från de digitala komponenterna i objekten var dålig. Vissa fungerade inte alls. 

Det verkar på flera sätt som om den här avdelningen på något sätt getts lägre prioritet medan fokus legat på de andra, nyare avdelningarna. Min mest konkreta lösning är därför att man bör genomföra uppgraderingar och förbättringar av dessa digitala komponenter, så att den här avdelningen blir mer modern och bättre hänger ihop med de andra avdelningarna. Som det ser ut idag känns det som att kliva in på ett annat muséum snarare än en annan avdelning.

Jag, tillsammans med Emil, träffade en småbarnspappa som ställde upp på en intervju.

*Vi introducerar oss*

Varför har du valt att gå på museum idag?

Det är roligt, i synnerhet för barnen, som aldrig varit här förut. För min del var det ett tag sedan jag senast var här.

Varför valde du just Tekniska muséet?

Jag kan tänka mig att det är det roligaste muséet för barn. Andra museer är antagligen inte lika lockande. Här får barnen möjlighet att utforska mycket på egen hand.

Vad tycker du är mest intressant med det här muséet?

De nya avdelningarna där uppe (på ovanvåningarna) är rätt roliga för barn, som får prova att spela spel och göra egna animationer. Själv tycker jag devStudion* på plan 3 är ganska intressant.

Vilken målgrupp tror du det här muséet främst riktar sig mot?

Barn och ungdomar, i synnerhet skolklasser. Barn är fulla av energi och har som sagt mycket svängrum för att utforska här.

Känner du att det är någonting här på muséet som saknas eller som kan förbättras?

Inte som jag kan komma på direkt från huvudet, nej..

* devStudion är en avdelning som fokuserar mycket på artificiell intelligens och programmering; besökarna får exempelvis lära sig grundläggande modellering med enkla program

Småbarnspappan menade alltså att muséet i huvudsak tilltalar barn, vilket i hög grad stämde utifrån de observationer vi gjorde. De flesta avdelningarna har interagerbara objekt såsom touch-skärmar och styrbara robotar. Muséet ger barn möjligheten att utforska, ha roligt och på ett underhållande samt lärorikt sätt bekanta sig med olika typer av teknik.

State Of The Art Analysis Eric Hallström

After visiting both Nordiska museet and Tekniska Museet is my impression very different. The themes on both museum is of course different but the whole experience was like day and night.

My impression from Nordiska Museet was very stiff and quite in contrast from Tekniska Museet that was alive and very interactive.

I will now go through some key points that "Gulan" talked about at a lecture from both the museums we visited.

Target group

From my point of view is this the most important question in this course. It’s easy as a developer to forget who is really going to use the stuff I’m developing. It’s funny though what the literature pointing, I’m quoting: “every product that is used by someone has a user experience.” And it’s so true, why are we really developing stuff if it’s not meant to be for the user? The other part from this quote to mean something is that you can’t design a user experience, the only thing as a developer can do is to design for the user experience. So the best thing you can do here is to really put a lot of work into what kind of people is the design for. This will make development much easier if you know what kind of target group you have. What does this particular group of people need and how do they cope with it? This is some key questions you need to ask yourself when developing something in the future. Some of the key features from the literature when user experience is in the focus is functionality, aesthetics, content, look, feel and emotional appeal for the design.  The literature is also pointing out the wide range of these aspects to reach i.e. your product needs to be fun, healthy, build a social capital and have some cultural status and the design also needs to bring some sense to the users in how they are experiences the product. In some way every object out there maybe have all of these features. I mean you can always relate to what specific objects mean to you and what they bring to you but can you really develop for example a cultural capital? So basically these are some good theories and they really are theories for me at this moment of course it’s a good goal to strive for but can you really reach and implement all of these features? The literature is calling these ideas for principles and really mention that they are something to strive towards and are here for us designers to have something to strive towards. 

Things to engage in at Nordiska Museet 

• Voice information from your portable speaker. 
• Interactive Ipads with information.

Layout of Nordiska Museet
The exhibition was rather self explaining and you just followed the guided voice in your head phones which was handed out in the start. So it was very easy to navigate and follow the exhibition route.

Visitors at Nordiska Museet   

My observations of other visitors at the museum was that they all walked very quietly around in par or alone and not saying much. There was really nothing to do other then just observe glass cages of old history. The main group was tourists and older people. Thought it was a Monday and maybe not the most crowded that to visit.   

Things to engage in at Tekniska Museet

• Loads of big touchscreens to examine bodies and other cool stuff.
• Kinect's screens that interacted in a nice way with the visitor. 
• Music 
• Computer games
• Bicycle that you could measure your produced energy.
• And the list can go on and on, there was loads of stuff to do and engage in. 

Layout of Tekniska Museet

It was the opposite of Nordiska museet was in terms of easily navigating through out the museum. Even through there was a separate exhibitions when we were there. And the separate exhibition was easy to navigate through out. 

Visitors at Tekniska Museet     

The target group here was rather clear, I felt really old walking around there navigating through loads of children running around like crazy. The target group here was family's and younger school classes. Even though I really appreciated both exhibitions and some stuff really blew my mind. 

We did a few interviews, here is one that Kenneth Runnman transcribed. We started with a short introduction that we where students from KTH and asked if it was okay to record the interview 

E = Eric, I = Interview target.

E: Första frågan då, varför valde ni att gå på just det här museet?
I: Fast, jag är ju egentligen också dum (person att fråga) för att jag känner honom(som arbetade på museet), vill ni ha mig ändå( som intervjuperson)?
E: Ja.
I: och så har jag jobbat här.Nej, men det är ett kul museum.
E: ehm, så det är inte första gången ni är här?
I: Nej.
E: Känns det som att det saknas någonting?
I: som vadå?
E: vad som helst.
I: Ja, faktist… bilarna och flygplan, traditionell teknik.
E: Så du vet antagligen vilken målgrupp som museet har?
I: Nej, det vet jag inte men jag antar att det är barnfamiljer.
E: Har ni något syfte eller vill ni få ut något av det här besöket?
I: Nej, vi bara kollar.

E: Tack, ska ni ha!  

Bumbleebee from Transformers
from Tekniska Museet.

Old School packman game from Tekniska Museet.

Some observations 

Among the interviews we noticed that the lack of humans inside the exhibitions was a problem, a guide or someone to explain what this item really is. It's pretty funny though that with loads and loads of new cutting edge technology that the lack of real humans suddenly became a problem. I can agree with the people we did the interviews with that it would be awesome to have some sort of guide or just a person from the museum walking around there. 

Another observation that we did was with the information TV at the entrance, Alexander in our group had been waiting there and did the observation and noticed that not a single person looked at it. 

Another observation was just when we entered the museum, the staff called out in the speakers with information about some guided explanation of some train track that was there. It was pretty good way to reach out with information to the whole museum.

Problem solutions 

I've been talking about navigation problems through out the museum at Tekniska museet, even though that the separate exhibition was pretty self navigating the problem i felt was the connection between the main museum and the other exhibition. The difference from Nordiska museet that the solution they had there was really easy and you just walked from floor to floor until you reached the cafeteria and had to order coffee. 

My most mind blown impression from Tekniska museet was the use of Kinect technology. I could really see Nordiska museet using some kind of Kinect in their exhibitions, like through Kinect you can participate some kind of old dinner party 300 years back or something. 

Both Tekniska Museet and Nordiska Museet had evaluation formulas on touchscreens that you could tell you opinion of the museum. At Tekniska Museet these just fell through and I can't imagine that the participation is big. At Nordiska Museet it felt instead of some sort of funny part of the exhibition that we finally got to interact with something. So I think one feature the museum could use is some sort of tracking device for their visitors so they could optimize different areas and see what people really find out what was interesting.  

This is me!