Day Ten – Apps, Robots, and Interactive’s for the Future

Class took us through two fantastic Smithsonian’s today, beginning with the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Dan Davis, the Manager of the Media Group gave us an inside look on a current application the museum is investing into, called StQry. The application is available for both android and apple, smartphones and tablets, allowing visitors to interact with NMAI outside garden environment. The garden invites the visitors to look beyond the gravel, plants and water features to learn more about ideas, beliefs and emotions American Indians hold in regards to our environment. Though the app the still finicky, the wireless weak and the Bluetooth receptors have short life spans, the app is extremely engaging, allowing the museum visitors to perform self guided tours making the outside as much of a museum as the inside of the museum. The app adapts location awareness as well in addressing how and when visitors will interact in specified areas or with specific objects. The fact that the app is audio based is nice because the visitor doesn’t have to focus on a screen but rather enjoy the scenery with an audio background. During our visit, Mr. Davis also provided us with the opportunity of drive and working their Beam, robot. The Beam system provides museum accessibility to those that may be restricted in coming to the physical museum space. The technology is a remote controlled robot with two cameras that are controlled by the individual off site while viewing the site in an engaging and real time way.

Our next Smithsonian museum was the Air & Space , where our class began in their newest exhibition space that addressed, EVA experiences. The exhibit begins by drawing visitors in with big scenes of space allowing them to get a back understanding of this experience. Vicki Portway, Head of Web & New Media and Sara Banks discussed how they struggled to come up with ideas in order to bring people into the subject matter of the exhibition because the reality is that so few people have been in space. So they created social media integration into the space by providing additional exhibit resources via the website. The rationale of including content in this way came for the results of surveys that showed people taking pictures and sharing them virtually but by doing so they were also sharing my content and information rather than personal (selfie) photography. By learning how there visitors were using the space they can leverage the visitors various methods of sharing.The Air & Space duo also had us perform a short activity to see how the new changes they plan to incorporate into the ‘Milestones of Flight’ exhibit space, would hold up for students our age and whether specific elements needed to be fixed. After a great discussion it was time to shuffle back to 1717 Mass, with Rachel, Nell and Phyllis we got back to campus in style by taking Uber!

The evening ended with 19 fantastic presentations of our Future objects. It was amazing to see what people thought of and I’m pretty sure that I want Meg’s halogram exhibit to become a reality!

With that I’m taking my leave,

Bree