OPENOTE

AR App that reimagines digital & physical museum spaces

ROLE

Research, Ideation, Prototyping, Mock-up

TIMELINE

Three months

TYPE

Marker-Based Augmented Reality Mobile Application

TOOLS USED

Pen+Paper, Adobe Xd, Adobe Photoshop

The problem / 
the solution

I have often walked into a museum space and wondered: where do I begin? I wished for a visual geiger counter that would let me know what was hot! What objects were sparking conversation? What did people have to say about them?

Openote uses Augmented Reality (AR) to allow museum visitors to see, create, and interact with Notes: digital post-its suspended in the museum space.  AR integrates the physical and virtual museum spaces to center participation, dialogue, and choice of content. 

1

RESEARCH

1.1 - Survey

To gain insight into how people engage with others and the museum space, I distributed a screener survey to over 30 participants via Slack, Facebook, and personal connections. I was interested in learning why they visit museums, how they engage with others while they are there, and how they use digital tools in the space. 

The majority expressed an interest in using digital tools in the museum space, but wanted something other than websites or audio tours. 

1.2 - Persona

Personas are crucial in understanding users and shaping the design process. They guide decisions, prioritized features, and ensured user-centricity. I created this persona to begin ideating around the kind of product he might benefit from.

BIO

John typically visits museums as a way to unwind, listen to music, and recharge before his next hectic day at work.  While he prefers to keep to himself, he is new to the Atlanta area and wishes there was a way to engage with other museum visitors without having to talk or take off his headphones.  He hopes to learn more about the museum through the experiences of others without draining his social battery.

JOHN DOE

AGE: 28

OCCUPATION: Accountant

EDUCATION: Bachelor's

EXTROVERT

INTROVERT

ANALYTICAL

CREATIVE

TIME RICH

BUSY

1.3 - Literature Review

Openote facilitates the creation and integration of digital content (supplied by both museum and visitor alike) into the physical museum space through the use of Augmented Reality (AR). Visitors can leave their mark, and the museum can provide supplementary content for visitors to explore. 

It does so with the intention of transitioning any museum into a more participatory institution without having to make sweeping changes to the physical space. In the words of Nina Simon, as written in her book The Participatory Museum: “Instead of being ‘about’ something or ‘for’ someone, participatory institutions are created and managed ‘with’ visitors.” (iii). 

Openote’s centering of participation signifies and enacts a renegotiation of power between the institution and its visitors. 

With Openote, visitors are able to participate in an institution-facilitated form of “public authoring,” that allows visitors to explore a “fundamental human desire to ‘map’ and 'mark’ territory as part of belonging and of feeling a sense of ownership of our environment” (Lane and Thelwall). 

Along a similar vein, visitors can partake in what Malcolm McCullough refers to as “urban markup”, which has the ability to transform the “privileged reader into an active tagger, an embodied interpreter, and at some level, and with some unstudied degree of access and duration, also a cultural producer,” (61). 

Both the concepts of public authoring and urban markup can be coupled with Simon’s concept of the participatory museum to demonstrate how visitors can benefit from their perceived contribution to the museum space. 

2

IDEATION

2.1 - Brainstorm

To get my creative juices flowing, I start sketching out what features this tool might need in order to be functional. I brainstormed to get a general idea of how it might function so that I would be in a better position to begin building a site map.

3.2 - Medium-Fidelity Mockup

The med-fi mockup is also a functional prototype created using Adobe Xd.

 VIEW ENTIRE PROTOTYPE

3.3 - High-Fidelity Mockup

Refined visuals for one of the flows.

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