Archaeology in Baden

How can we integrate the visitors as part of the museum?

The exhibition Archaeology in Baden at the Baden State Museum Karlsruhe is the first exhibition to follow the museum’s new overall concept: Museum visitors become active users who explore the museum’s collection based on what they are actually interested in using interactive, novel technologies. In the exhibition, the exhibits are initially presented without any further information. The focus is entirely on the aura of the original: A drastic change to the traditional exhibit signs. The visitors can decide themselves whether they want further information and receive it on demand – through the use of a wide variety of technologies. Sometimes almost conventionally via displays mounted above the objects, sometimes using novel, interactive technologies such as AR and VR. Several scientists – called Explainers – are always present to provide further information up close and personal. They even present original objects that visitors can then touch, look at and examine.

Results

We designed the exhibition „Archaeology in Baden“ in an interdisciplinary team of Architecture, Communication Design, and Computer Science students of the University of Konstanz and HTWG Konstanz. I was part of a team of three computer scientists and one designer that created the overall interaction concept for the exhibition as well as for each individual installation. For me, it was an exciting opportunity to work on a permanent exhibition in a renowned German museum. Moreover, for the realization of the exhibition, we collaborated with Atelier Brückner, one of the world’s leading exhibition design companies, which executed our ideas and designs in amazing quality. 

The Exhibition

Unfortunately, I can not show you photos from the exhibition, as I do not hold the rights to the photos. If you want to see the exhibition, please have a look at the website of Atelier Brückner or of Mediale Ausstellungsgestaltung. There, you’ll also find more information about the exhibition.

Process

As it was a commercial project, I cannot reveal too much about our design process or show images from it. However, I can describe our core steps: 

After the Baden State Museum had chosen the winning exhibition design, it asked our HCI workgroup to finalize the interaction design for it. We were a team of one designer and three computer scientists (including me). At this point, the interaction design was still quite sketchy – it was clear what technologies were going to be used and for what purpose, for example, that visitors should be able to scan exhibits using AR smartphones. Consequently, the task was multi-faceted: We had to create a consistent design system for all interactive elements in the exhibition, design their UI, and further specify how the various exhibits should be implemented to hand off the concept to a programming company. The result was 128 pages-long report that detailed the design and usage of every exhibit, including their technical requirements and functioning, enabling the programming company to immediately start developing. 

After the company was finished developing it, we evaluated the exhibition using a heuristic evaluation.