museumsandtheweb.com - interface design

Design and Development of a Collections Dashboard

biblio — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:34:42 +0000

Twidale, M., Urban R., & Adamczyk P. (2010). Design and Development of a Collections Dashboard. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2010. Proceedings.

Designing an Interactive Visualization to Explore a Pre-Hispanic Collection

Blanca_A — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:57:32 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

Digital Exhibition

Keywords:

digital heritage

Keywords:

interaction design

Keywords:

interactive

Keywords:

Interactive Visualization

Keywords:

interface design

Abstract:

This demonstration presents the current status of the design, and the implementation of a digital interface to exhibit an archaeological collection online. This digital interface is designed to explore online the main pieces of the collection of the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa, located in eastern Mexico, by bonding together ideas about visualization of information, context mapping and trails of navigation.

The collection that belongs to this museum consists of important cultural-heritage artifacts of the main cultures that established themselves in the current state of Veracruz, before the Spaniards’ arrival in Mexico: the Huaxteca culture in the north, the culture of Central Veracruz in the centre of the state and the Olmeca in the south. Its total collection preserves and guards about 29,000 Pre-Hispanic artifacts, from which nearly 1,500 are exhibited in its halls.

The project draws on the design of a digital interface that privileges exploration and browsing of visual connections with an open-ended focus; namely, an interface that allows a visitor to place a ‘object/concept’ at the centre of his/her interpretative layer, and thus create a hub of connections. Expressed differently, the interface is based on associations of visualizations and the tracking of diverse mappings set by the visitors themselves. Following is presented an overview of the interaction design space of this digital interface:

When exploring the online collection, the visitor has the choice to select any category as a main hub. For example, when the visitor selects the hub Dualidad (Duality), the interface presents visualizations of an ‘object/concept’ that are connected to this selection, such as the artifacts of smiling faces, twins, and feminine figures. If the visitor decides to access more information about a specific artifact of an smiling face, then the interface displays some other mappings of ‘object/concept’ related to that artifact; for instance, concepts of death, the Ollin (movement) as well as some other archaeological pieces connected to the main hub of Duality. After that, if the visitor continues to explore the collection and decides to discover more about the Ollin concept, this can be selected as the main hub. In consequence, the interface will present a selection of visual results connected to this new category as well as of all the artifacts of the collection that have connections with this latter category.

While there are several projects that have used similar concepts, within the area of cultural heritage there are few studies that investigate on the exploration of archeological information presentation. Therefore, this project aims to contribute on such exploration, by designing an interface based on connections of visualizations, and to the further creation of interpretative layers for the visitors’ exploration.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstration V

Site:

http://mlab.taik.fi/~bacuna/max_Project2008/index.html

Authors:

Blanca Acuña

The Drexel Digital Museum Project Revisited

martink — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 18:54:41 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

controlled vocabulary

Keywords:

historic costume

Keywords:

fashion design

Keywords:

open source

Keywords:

interface design

Abstract:

This demonstration will describe the update of an established historic costume collection website in collaboration with CollectiveAccess, an open source tool for managing and archiving digital assets. The Drexel Historic Costume Collection (DHCC, is a teaching collection used for research by students and faculty of Drexel University and the fashion community. The Collection, containing 10,000+ items, represents over 200 years of historic costume and textile design. It offers artifacts to study not only Fashion Design and Costume History, but Sociology, Anthropology, Design and American History as well.

The Drexel Digital Museum Project (digimuse) was conceived to increase access to and to conserve the DHCC holdings. The online database, http://digimuse.cis.drexel.edu, includes QuickTime panoramas and quality details of a garment’s construction and embellishment. Digital galleries of past exhibitions and links to other fashion collection websites enhance the value of the website as a research tool.

The best practices standards for archival image capture of the Museum Online California and the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) have been implemented to insure long term preservation and high caliber metadata curation. OAI-PMH and Dublin Core schema elements have been combined and enriched with characteristics particular to fashion/historic costume to create an application profile for historic costume.

Implementation was realized by employing graduate students from the College of Information Science and Technology. The two year turnover of students required regular training of new students. The inconsistent programming quality created somewhat of a “Frankensystem” in the code. The interface is also in need of a makeover.

After reviewing various options we decided to work with CollectiveAccess (CA), an open source tool for institutional strategy, and for elaborating and managing projects involving intellectual property, asset management and archiving, digital imaging and licensing, publishing and standards. (http://www.collectiveaccess.org ) CA offers free web-browser based tools for a variety of types of collections in the museum community. Working with the CA team, we are configuring this cataloguing tool to provide an application profile to best serve the needs of historic costume/fashion and support the OAI/PMH metadata standards we have already implemented.

A significant feature of digimuse is the continued development of controlled vocabulary for fashion terminology. Our current system provides a category classification hierarchy, headed by the ICOM classification of body coverings, and descending to contemporary fashion terms. CA will allow us access a variety of additional data sources and to readily add source notes and rules for adding new terms to the existing hierarchy. It will be offered as a template in the CA configuration library.

Maintaining a contemporary online archive can be an expensive endeavor in both human and monetary resources. By choosing system design solutions that incorporate emerging image and data standards from the museum and library communities, we hope to help converge standards and continue to create an online collection and tool for scholarship that is extendable, portable, and accessible to a wide range of audiences. CollectiveAccess is providing us with the best tools, at the right price, to enable our vision.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstrations I

Site:

http://digimuse.cis.drexel.edu

Authors:

Kathi Martin

Connecting the Collection: From Physical Archives to Augmented Reality in the Netherlands Architecture Institute

biblio — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:10:44 +0000

Lemmens, P., & Vanstappen H. (2010). Connecting the Collection: From Physical Archives to Augmented Reality in the Netherlands Architecture Institute. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web.

Familiarity Breeds Content: knowledge and effect in museums on the Web

jtrant — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:03:08 +0000

Bearman, D., & Trant J. (2003). Familiarity Breeds Content: knowledge and effect in museums on the Web. Museums and the Web 2003.

A hypertext for an interactive visit to a science and technology museum

jtrant — Wed, 02 May 2007 01:06:28 +0000

Fresta, G., & Signore O. (1993). A hypertext for an interactive visit to a science and technology museum. (Lees, Diane, Ed.).Museums and Interactive Multimedia: Selected papers from the second International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums.