24th MAY 2007
CV
Abstract
AMICO: An Interactive Mobile Assistant for Museums´ Exhibitions.
The implementation of Technologies in the cultural field has completely changed the processes of producing, distributing, communicating and consuming culture, among others. The implementation of mobile devices that display multimedia customized information provide new opportunities for museums to enhance visitors´ experience.
AMICo has been designed as a prototype to be used in an exhibition room for visitors who were equipped with wirelessly connected handheld devices. It was implemented on an exhibition showing a set of architectural scale models from the Spanish architect Refael Moneo hold in the Kutxaespacio del Arte – Sala Kubo exhibition centre of the Kutxa Foundation in Donostia-San Sebastian during September and October 2005. The AMICo prototype presented multimedia additional customized information to visitors when they approach some specific scale models of the artworks.
The AMICo prototype was based on the use of a wireless communication system combined with position tracking. The visitors carried a handheld device (OQO)as they walk through the exhibition. Some wireless access points detected the position of the visitors and sent the exact information to a central server, so that it could display the appropriate multimedia information on the devices. All the information was stored in a relational database, whose final structure was compiled from the requirements and the proposed schema from the content generators.
During the visit, the system tracked the behaviour of the visitors and recorded their visits to the contents, as well as the time spent on each of them. Once the visitor decided to finish the visit, the own device displayed a questionnaire asking for their impressions and opinions on the experience. These responses were used, combined with the results from some focus groups with specialized people, to evaluate the experience as a whole to better identify the state of the implementation of this kind of mobile devices with additional multimedia content.