Interactive exhibits in museums, visitor centres and gallery settings, enable visitors to engage with complex materials, revealing hidden connections and providing a shared focus for active exploration and conversation. In this studio, students research, design and produce an interactive exhibit for a museum or visitor-centre, and explore approaches to interfacing with multimedia content (i.e. images, audio recordings, videos) that go beyond conventional keyboard, mouse and touch screen interactions to explore the possibilities of more tangible and physically dynamic ways of interacting and exploring multimedia materials through a range of sensing technologies from RFID tags, to gestural interactions and other touch and movement sensing technologies.

Building on skills and knowledge developed in SDES9311 (Interaction Design: Foundations for Human Computer Interaction) students advance their skills in the design, production and evaluation of interactive exhibits, with a focus on ergonomics, interaction aesthetics, electronics and the manipulation of audio-visual materials. Students develop familiarity with theories and principals of interface design, signal-mapping, interaction aesthetics and exhibition design and apply this to the development of a functioning prototype exhibit – based on research into emerging real-world applications for interactive displays and interpretive systems in the field of exhibition design.

Lectures, case studies and tutorial presentations will introduce you to the principals of interface design, signal-mapping, and interaction aesthetics, and hands-on technical workshops will will enable you to develop your skills integrating off-the-shelf components and systems with software tools for navigating immersive visualisations.