Visiting the National Museum of Scotland, reflections on digital displays

Two weekends ago, I went to have a look round the newly revamped National Museum of Scotland (NMS) with a visiting friend and my S.O. We didn’t have a lot of time, so hit a few highlights in the Scottish history part of the museum (relatively new, not recently remodelled) and then wandered through the graceful Victorian atrium down toward the new animal hall at the far end. A combination of weekend, festival, and probably school being out for the summer meant that this central space had the general ambience of an airport terminal, complete with a seemingly random selection of large artefacts displayed completely out of context. On a quieter day, it might seem more serene and even cathedral-like, illuminated from above. Artefacts aside, it made me genuinely happy to see the museum so busy. There were clearly plenty of foreign tourists, but I also heard a range of solidly Scottish accents all over the building. I hope that the museum can keep up this momentum, and will succeed in bringing local visitors back again and again as exhibits change and children grow, rather than simply attracting people in for a look-see now that the long remodel is finally finished.

Looking down at the Animal Hall from an upper floor

The skeleton of a giant, extinct deer greets visitors at the doorway from the atrium into the animal hall

The animal hall was obviously particularly popular, and inspired an air of wonder and fantasy due in no small part to the model Tyrannosaurus skeleton inside the entrance, and the sharks, dolphins, hippopotamus, and other animals swimming playfully through the air several stories up. Balconies wrapped around this central space with additional exhibits, both digital and carbon-based. I laud the curators for figuring out ways to display taxidermied and model animals (or the skeletons of their extinct relatives) in ways that illuminated relationships between them or illustrated ecosystems, adaptations, and other points. I will digress here to say that the exact OPPOSITE of this approach would be the African Hall in the newly re-built (and otherwise state-of-the art) California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, which appears to have been kept as a creepy time capsule in its same room while the rest of the museum was re-built around it. Their website describes the 1934 dioramas as “majestic” but I think they mean night-mare inducing (seriously, as a child I found them very upsetting). Anyway!

Leaving the animal hall by an upper floor, we walked into the World Cultures section of the museum. Generations of Scots brought back a selection of curiosities that have been grouped by a combination of geography and themes, mostly sensitively. Unfortunately, in the sections I visited there was not enough material from any one culture to give a very comprehensive view. Perhaps I should say ‘fortunately’ as there are always so many questions about how explorers and colonisers acquired their cultural treasures in the first place!

Then, I saw it in the middle of the floor below: something to arouse my professional interest.

Display in the World Cultures section of the NMS

At first I thought what I was seeing was a touch screen interface being used by multiple people at the same time, apparently playing some kind of game about clothing and domestic artefacts that went with the surrounding “daily life” type exhibition. I was disappointed to watch further and find that it was 1. Not a touch screen, but apparently just a regular screen (or a projection, even) with buttons, and 2. That there were four stations, and multiple people standing at some of them. Some of the users seemed to be interacting because they knew each other (a family?), but this interaction was not mediated by the interface, and the person(s) at each station seemed to be using it fairly independently of one another.

I was very disappointed—what at first glance had seemed to be a very advanced interactive display was less advanced than I thought. However, even without going down to examine the content myself, I noticed one very positive thing: Most of the people who were using the interface when I began watching were still using the interface some minutes later when I walked on. At several stations, people were collaborating to use it (e.g. two children or parent/child). Every interactive museum display is in competition for the attention of the museum patrons—there is a lot of stuff in the room, some of it will be shinier, and an interface that is difficult to use is likely to be abandoned by the user immediately. I had never thought about this much before until listening to a talk at the Artificial Intelligence in Education conference this June, in Auckland. A researcher named H. Chad Lane was presenting work about tour guide and “coaching”virtual agents at the Boston Science Museum, and pointed out that this is very different than many other types of technology-enhanced learning because the museum visitor is free to walk away from the program at any time (besides being practically unknown in terms of age, prior knowledge, and other factors). Thus, it is very positive that the display at the NMS seemed to be holding its users’ attention over a period of time. They must be doing something right!

While I definitely sympathise with the decision to choose a simpler and perfectly sufficient technology over the most cutting-edge thing possible (probably a multi-touch table plus...bells and whistles? Not sure), I hope to see more museums pushing the boundaries of what can be done with an educational display. Particularly, displays where multiple people can interact at the same time without having defined “stations,” or where locating different content in different places meaningfully links to the content or layout of the exhibit. Better yet, there could be displays that encourage or even trick the users into interacting with each other :)

One station-less display that particularly impressed me was at The Settlement Museum 871 +/- 2, in Reykjavík (Iceland). This museum is fairly limited in size and for a very good reason: it is underground in the city centre, encompassing the actual foundations of an early settlement house and some outbuildings, and displaying the artefacts associated with the site. Additional materials, artistic renderings, and displays try to evoke the landscape and even sounds of the period. Some of the materials and animations from the museum are available online. Yes, there is an English option.

This is one of my rather dark photographs of the archeological site around which the museum is based (an oval house with central hearth...can you see it? Photo taken from one end of the house).

One of the displays was a large multi-touch table through which you could explore the “layers” of the house and other remains a few yards away. The house on the multi-touch table was oriented in the same way as the actual house, and you reached this table after having walked all around the walls. Thus, while standing at different parts of the table allowed you to access different content, there were not rigid stations and the content mapped directly to a space/physical experience. I spent a long time at the table--partly because I literally had the museum to myself on the day after Christmas and could stay there as long as I wanted—but the fact that I remember it so clearly almost two years later also speaks highly of its design, considering how many museums I visit! Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of the multi-touch table display, not imagining that it would be of later use to me.

In conclusion, do give the National Museum of Scotland a visit if you are in town—the Scottish history exhibits (about which I have not written here) are especially good. I myself plan to go back to the museum as soon as I have another free afternoon. Also, please try the digital exhibits! For anyone else interested in touch-screen interfaces and technology-enhanced learning, also have a think about how we can keep pushing the boundaries of these interfaces to make them more interesting for visitors—and to provide useful information about what works and what doesn’t.

UPDATE! (September 14th, 2011)

Interesting article about museums using cutting edge technologies to enhance visitor experiences and take content outside of the physical museum and into other contexts. Check it out here.