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A tag in the hand: supporting semantic, social, and spatial navigation in museums

April 9, 2009 | Media and Technology, Exhibitions
Designers of mobile, social systems must carefully think about how to help their users manage spatial, semantic, and social modes of navigation. Here, we describe our deployment of MobiTags, a system to help museum visitors interact with a collection of "open storage" exhibits, those where the museum provides little curatorial information. MobiTags integrates social tagging, art information, and a map to support navigation and collaborative curation of these open storage collections. We studied 23 people's use of MobiTags in a local museum, combining interview data with device use logs and tracking of people's movements to understand how MobiTags affected their navigation and experience in the museum. Despite a lack of social cues, people feel a strong sense of social presence—and social pressure—through seeing others' tags. The tight coupling of tags, item information, and map features also supported a rich set of practices around these modes of navigation.

TEAM MEMBERS

  • Dan Cosley
    Author
    Cornell University
  • Jonathan Baxter
    Author
    Cornell University
  • Soyoung Lee
    Author
    Cornell University
  • Brian Alson
    Author
    Cornell University
  • Saeko Nomura
    Author
    Cornell University
  • Phil Adams
    Author
    Cornell University
  • Chethan Sarabu
    Author
    Cornell University
  • Geri Gay
    Author
    Cornell University
  • Citation

    Publication Name: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    Resource Type: Reference Materials
    Discipline: Art, music, and theater | Education and learning science
    Audience: General Public | Museum/ISE Professionals
    Environment Type: Media and Technology | Websites, Mobile Apps, and Online Media | Exhibitions | Museum and Science Center Exhibits

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