Designing With Web - Part 3: week 1
Remake museum visit experience for kids using sound design
Group 26
Project 1: The MOMU
Context
when? where? who? why?
Nowadays, many parents like to take their children to visit the museum, which can satisfy the child's curiosity and promote the feelings of a family,especially during the weekend.Besides, the objects displayed in the museum are suitable for the thinking characteristics of the child's specific image, which helps them to establish a connection between concrete objects and abstract concepts.In addition to learning knowledge, visiting museums can also inspire children and develop their professional interests. Most of the children's professional expertise and interest in learning are not born, but cultivated. Frequently taking children to visit a variety of museums is like opening a window for countless knowledge for children. Children are knowledgeable, open-minded, active in thinking, and have a wide range of interests, so there are more opportunities for success.
However, for children with visual impairment,they cannot feel the charm of the exhibits through watching. Vision is a great channel for children to perceive the world. It is also a way to enhance the museum experience for children.Because visual defects can cause many children not to have chance to expand their professional knowledge, and also reduce the fun of interaction between parents and children, making the museum less attractive.This is also very helpless to children with visual problem. We hope to design a sound-related app to change the status quo and enhance the museum experience for these kids.
Target
for whom?
With this app, we want to help more and more children to enjoy the artistic education from museums, even though it’s inconvenient for some of them to see the masterpieces directly in museums. Specialized in sound technology, this app is mainly targeted to children who cannot read yet, who have visual problems. Besides, the app is designed with related pictures and music that fits every child who want to have a mobile museum instructor. No matter when and where the children want to get some knowledge about artworks, they can ask for help to this app. When visiting museums, the children can also use this app to get instructions of the exhibits, which are more suitable for children. Although the main users are children, parents, as the guardians of children, could be the potential buyers of this app. Schools may also be potential customers when providing art-related courses for students.
Service offered
what? how?
This application contains some of the famous exhibits all over the world with audio introduction, specialized for kids who have language disability and who cannot read yet. When turning on the app, the artworks are listed randomly page by page. Every artwork has a full-page display, and the general audio instruction of the painting will play automatically. What’s more, there are several points on the painting which are noted as + plus information. The children can click the points to listen to more stories about the details, histories and background stories about the painting. In this process, children will find the fun of discovering art history and knowledge step by step by themselves. The interface will be kids-friendly which is easy to operate.
Identity
describe the universe around your service by creating a mood board and name your service accordingly
Benchmark
List concurrents / relative projects and describe how they relate/differentiate to your project
- studiokamp
This website provides the sound design for museum,like in Barberini Museum,Pieter Henket, a photographer, has mixed a 30-minute soundscape created from the sounds, stories and music of the surrounding area and he played it in the museum to show all kinds of moods for the exhibits and attract the visitors to step into the world of sound and art about the Congo Basin. Our application is also to give life and vitality to the exhibits through sound, let visitors feel the charm of museum culture, it is the point that studiokamp is related to our service and our application will provide different styles of sound according to different exhibits, to give visitors different feelings, this is the difference between us and studiokamp. In addition, studiokamp is aimed at ordinary people, and our application is aimed at children with special needs. - Sound Booth
CMA website provides studio activities for children.When kids visit the museum, they can use the Sound Booth to have a small group discussion led by an artist.Children can learn to create songs, podcasts about the exhibits in the museum when they have inspiration. The aspect of Sound Booth's relevance to our application is to link the museum's exhibits to sound design, and to transform the music into a carrier by analyzing the styles displayed on the exhibits. The difference is that Sound Booth transforms the exhibits into actual sounds or musical works, focusing on the child's imagination and creativity,our application is to show the children the cultural heritage of the museum through the sound design as well as to impart knowledge to kids, so that they have a great experience in museum. - The Louvre App
The Louvre App is the app designed for better visiting experiences. It includes detailed picture and instructions about most exhibits, the tour route and basic information about the Louvre. It has completed structure and content but all the information is about the Louvre. Our app is a combination of masterpieces from different famous museums. Users can easily get information about different types of artworks and compare between them with one app. What’s more, the introductions of exhibits on the Louvre App are focused on adults, so that text is the most used way to show. However, our app targets children, so that sound technology will be more used to facilitate children to learn about famous artworks.
References
books/films/articles/...
- A sound effect:
This article tells the important role of sound in museums. Sound, especially music, allows children to quickly focus on the stories told by the museum and the scenes they set.At the same time, it also mentioned a variety of sound design forms,which broadened our thinking mode. - Video about sound design in Churchill Museum:Click here!
This video provides a variety of ideas for our application design, including the sound form of the explanation and the way the music is inserted. - Information about the Louvre App
Project 2: Mazeum
Context
when? where? who? why?
Museums are places where knowledge and cultures are shared. It is a great way for their visitors to discover new works of art, to learn about a specific topic or culture. Therefore, it is a great way to teach history or science to children and it is common to see some elementary school classes in musuems. However, children are easily distracted and it is soemtimes hard to get their attention. Thus, making museum experience fun is very important to catch the eyes of children which let them focus on the exhibitions!
That's why we imagined an application allowing children to discover what every museum has to offer in a playful way without disturbing other visitors. The goal is to create a treasure hunt thanks to sounds for children. All museums in the world interested by this idea can benefit this service, allowing children from all over the world to enjoy such an experience.
Target
for whom?
With this app, we want to encourage and help children to get interested into museums. We want to give them the feeling of having fun while learning many new things. That's the reason why our application is for all the children who goes to museums with or without their families and who felt bored during the traditional way of visiting a museum, which is reading, watching all by ourselves. Being a game, a treasure hunt, our application targeted mainly young children ( between 4 to 12 ) who struggle to be focused and be interested in visiting a museum. Thanks to our app, whenever they get bored during the visit, they can launch the game on their mobil phone (or their parents'), learn a lot about the different piece of arts. Thanks to the sound system ( when they get close to the piece of arts they were looking for in the game), they won't disturb visitors' visit.
Service offered
what? how?
This application will contain accurate information about the pieces of particular museums. Children will be able to learn about the artistic current, the dates, the stories, the author of any pieces of art of the museum. All these information will be rengistered in the app and will appear each time a piece is to be searched and found. In the same time, the app will contain also different music corresponding wether the period or the theme of the piece of art which will be an alarm for the child: the music will get louder when he gets closer to the piece and quieter when he goes away from it. In summary, they our app will provide knowledge ( the information + music ) and will provide a way to entertain children with different ages.
How will the app function ? In a museum, children need to connect theirself in the app ( they all have a personalized account) and they will find a button "start" to begin the treasure hunt. To launch our app, we first decided to focus on one museum: the LOUVRE. As a consequence first of all, children will have to choose the part of the museum they are visiting to have access to the pieces of art. By consequence, the Louvre will have to pay to appear on the app. Once they have chosen the sector, they start the game. The first piece of art appears and clues ( information about the piece of arts) to find it will be available to help children to find it in the museum. then a music will start, a musicb with a connection to the piece of art searched, with a variation of the volume corresponding to the distance between children and the piece of arts.Identity
describe the universe around your service by creating a mood board and name your service accordingly
Benchmark
List concurrents / relative projects and describe how they relate/differentiate to your project
- Anima is an event company which organizes treasure hunts and escape games, including in museums for both children and adults. Even if their main customers seem to be companies looking for team building activities, they also have offers for private individuals and some just for children. They offer to organize birthday activities, school trips, as well as works councils and holiday camp activities.
- Louvre : ma visite is the official application of the Louvre museum that offers a very interactive visit of the museum. It allows people to know more about the different works of art and to locate themselves in the museum. There are over 600 audio comments about the different rooms and works of art.
- Tourblink is a set of applications that offer both free walking tours for cities you don't know and audioguides for a various number of museums. They created a different application for every museum or city they decided to focus on. Moreover, users receive notifcations when they pass by some interesting places. They focus on Europe and especially France for now.
References
books/films/articles/...
- Interactivity
This article underline the importance of interactivity in learning activity. This scientific article adopts the point of view of neuroscience. It underlines also the impirtance of the use of any interactif multimédia to support learning. - Information about the Louvre App.
- Video about a blog to make the children don't be bored during visit in museums here.
This video explains shows that a chil bored in a museum is a common situation, andthis blog is thinking about methods to prevent children from being bored