hegemony rules

Cronin is an Interaction designer at Cooper. This is a case study of the Getty Center (founded by J. Paul Getty - believed that art had a "civilizing effect" on the "common (wo)man." Hilarous!)

Getty Center - Richard Meyer (designer) - in Brentwood, CA. Meyer was one of the first famous architects to build in-game architecture (Sim City 4).

When the museum opened, a lot of folks asked about the location of the bathrooms, because they weren't readily apparent. (Meta note: WTF? Why can't architects figure out that this is one of the most important things for visitors?). Ok, so Getty apparently wants to bring "art to the people," but problems were numerous: physical layout (parking garage, tram, multiple buildings with little signage); collection is (relatively) inaccessible; curators are primarily well-educated, fairly high-minded art historians, and who have a fairly "elite" perspective on collections.

Getty wanted to:

• Redesign kiosk system (existing)
  
• Redesign audio guide/handheld (existing)
  
• Integrate these two with their Web site

Some stakeholder goals - get visitors thinking (not teach something in particular) and have visitors return.

Cooper conducted 52 interviews with visitors. Used a qualitative approach (1 hour interviews); Cooper wanted to find patterns (didn't want to design for "52 indiosyncratic people"); research was not designed to be statistically significant.

Findings: People pretty much pulled out the maps immediately after disembarking from the tram. This is partly a function of the architecture and the "sweeping vista" that you see once you leave the tram. The social aspect of visits were critical - most were there to spend time with friends and family. Most people would like "walking around with a knowledgeable friend" ideally. Most people didn't know how to find out more information about the art (kiosks were difficult to find as they were tucked into corners).

People wanted to know the technique, provenance, and relevance to visitors' life. (Meta note: the PPT slides for this presentation were very well done - one large image from the galleries behind a slightly transparent box containing a few key phrases.)

Method: Cooper created personas - their "tried and true" formula. Created based on goals, behaviors, attitudes and aptitudes. They developed around 11 personas. For example: Tyler - "Wants to impress professors, sees art as another aspect of media, media student at a university in Santa Barbara." (Meta note: More stuff for dissertation.) These are "composite" personas (based on behavior patterns observed during research phase of project) - of course, Cronin mentions that they "got some of the 'idiosyncrasies' out." The Getty folks didn't believe that the personas were actually who they thought were visiting their museum (because they weren't "art literate"). The Cooper based their personas on actual data that Getty had already collected.

Requirements: Mental models of personas - "What is there to see, what should I see, where is it?" Interesting note - directions to cafe and bathroom were/are the most commonly used functions of the kiosk.

Needs: Planning (Web site), wayfinding, understanding, collecting, exploring (browse connections), collecting (information about what they've seen).

Vision: think about, appreciate, and understand art - always bringing visitors back to the art.

Challenges: populist, educational mission of the Getty Trust; architecture's lack of "affordance;" technological excise, cognitive friction; massive amount of content.

Strategies: context awareness, bookmarks, related topics, (NOT visitor-generated content or tagging - because the Getty was concerned that high school students would tag nudes with the word "boobs")

Kiosk: in-depth exploration/topics; secondary purpose is wayfinding

Handheld: location-specific information; "secret mission is to lead visitors to the art" - No random access find (no search - just information on the gallery in which the visitor is currently located)

Cronin then showed a bunch of screenshots for the kiosk and handhelds with some notes about the information/interaction flow. (Meta note: I wonder how they designed for differently-abled individuals.)

Implementation: Usability testing after the fact made slight changes to the kiosks. Handhelds were more of a challenge. Worked well until launch party - then they crashed and they all died. As a result they're not in widespread use. RFID was talked about, but there were significant political issues with implementing it.