State of the art analysis - Arsalan Syed

Analysis of the museum and website:

The museum was great at providing information for visitors. They had an information center right at the entrance and they provided maps. The museum made use of a lot of technological devices for visitors to interact with. For example, they had digital touch screens with an interface where one could find more information about a specific exhibit.

An interactive touch screen displaying information about a certain invention

They also had a mechanical crane which they could interact with using joysticks and buttons. They presented the following diagram below.

Controls for the crane

An observation I made was that people would skip the instructions and start trying to operate it anyway.  They were a bit confused as to how high or low the crane could reach and were oblivious to the fact that the machine needed to rest for a minute before it could be used again. It would have been good if they had conveyed this information on the diagram in large, bold text because that seemed to be the main issues the user was having.

Each exhibit had the appropriate information and explained it in a way so that visitors of varying ages and backgrounds could understand it. One criticism I have though is the size of the text because it happened to be minuscule. On some exhibits, they would have large blank spaces while using small font size, making the use of space a bit inefficient.

The museum also had several electronically displayed games which would require physical interactivity. For example, they had a skiing game where you would stand on a platform and physical shift your body left and right in order to navigate the ski course in the game. Games like these are interesting because of how they can engage the user and make them utilise several parts of the body.

I think that the museum's website has done a good job in displaying all of the relevant information a visitor may need. It has a "recent events" section so that visitors can identify any interesting exhibits they would like to see. It provides the essential information such as the address, prices as opening times. It has easy to understand language so that anyone who is unfamiliar with technology and technical terms will have little trouble finding the information they want. In my opinion, the have made a good use of the layout and how they display their information. They also have a feature where a user can resize the website to fit their display appropriately.

It would be a good idea to interview people who have had little experience with the website and see if it improves their experience at the museum.

Tekniska Museet website