CONNECTION: An interactive museum installation that explores the relations between visitors and the city of Eindhoven

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(1)CONNECTION: An interactive museum installation that explores the relations between visitors and the city of Eindhoven Jing Li. 1362909 [email protected]. Tim Naglé. Student ID [email protected]. Project coaches: Jean-Bernard Martens Loes van Renswouw. ABSTRACT. INTRODUCTION. This project is a collaboration with Eindhoven Museum to design an interactive installation as a part of the exhibition called “Museum door de stad”. The installation has the theme of 100 years of Eindhoven which is about the past, present and future of Eindhoven. It explores interesting findings through collecting data from all participants in order to improve it to a more personalized experience in the future.. Museum door de Stad. The installation “CONNECTION” invites people to test their connection with Eindhoven and used the personalized color to vote for the Future of Eindhoven. It provides new knowledge and rich interactions to participants by means of combining the interactive interface with tangible sensors. For the curator and designers, it is valuable to study about data of people’s mentality and their decisions as well as the possible relation between them. In this paper we introduce the design process of the installation with the main decisions we made to improve the design. User tests were conducted collect data, analyze trends and to evaluate the design of the installation. The results of the data show a potential relation that people having a high connection is more likely to vote for Living and people with a relatively low connection cares more about Public Space for the future development in Eindhoven.. Authors Keywords Interactive installation, Pop up museum, Engaging experience , Data collecting, Personalized experience.. Eindhoven Museum has been mostly known for their Historic open air museum, called “preHistorisch Dorp”, where visitors can have the experience of living in a village in different periods in time. However, in 2018, Eindhoven Museum has also started a new initiative called “Museum door de stad”. The museum presents this initiative as an “innovative museum concept for the cultural history museum of the future” [8]. The initiative was introduced on the Dutch Design Week expo in 2018 and is scheduled to end in 2020 [9]. The project consists of a series of installations that travel through the city of Eindhoven. The installations adhere to different themes, such as: the past, present and future of freedom and 100 years of Eindhoven. Studio Soeps For the installations of the Museum door de Stad, Eindhoven museum works together with Soeps Design Collective, which is a design studio that is responsible for finding the right designers for the installations and also realizing them. Soeps has facilitated and managed different successful installations for the previous themes. Such as the “Dilemma-Machine”[13] and the installations from MobiliTU/e [6] for the theme of the past, present and future of mobility in Eindhoven, or “Checkpoint Eindhoven”[1] for the theme of the liberation of Eindhoven during the second world war. The upcoming theme that Soeps and Eindhoven Museum will collaborate on is “100 jaar Eindhoven”. This theme is about how the different smaller villages around Eindhoven came together to form one big city. a hundred years ago, the growth and development of Eindhoven since then, and the future of the city in the upcoming 100 years. For this theme, Studio soeps has decided to put emphasis on the mentality of the residents of Eindhoven towards the city and the values they find important. The values they are interested in can be seen in figure 1. To do this they plan to create installations that will be put in the different areas of the city that used to be the separate towns that formed Eindhoven 100 years ago (Strijp, Gestel,Stratum,Tongelre, Woensel and Centrum) to be able to get insights from all the different areas within Eindhoven and to see if there are any differences. The mentality towards the city that Soeps is interested in, mostly comes from the brand that Eindhoven is creating around itself (figure 2). The brand relates to the city’s DNA, which is described by Eindhoven 365, the “custodian of the Brand”, as “The collective collaboration that creates positive energy and leads to unconventional solutions for complex challenges.” Or when put into a formula : “Unconventional x Collaboration = Energy” [7]. To give more depth to this definition, as well as to include the technology, design and knowledge aspects of the city, the brand also consists of the three core values, (1) Imagination, the ability to imagine the future, (2) Experiment, to dare to prototype the future, and (3) Realize, the ability to take a “hands on” approach to realize projects..

(2) Design Goals For this project we have decided to build further on Soeps desire to get people’s mentality towards the city and what they value in the city. In the rest of this report we will offer insights in the design process of an interactive outdoor installation to fit the theme of “100 jaar Eindhoven” that aims to provide studio Soeps and Eindhoven Museum with data that they might be able to use in future installations and other projects that deal with the city of Eindhoven. The goal of the installation towards the visitors is to provide them with an interactive and explorative experience that lets them voice their opinions on the city, provides them with personalised information and creates a form of communication between visitors by allowing them to share their visions of the future through the installation.. RELATED WORK. Figure 1: The six values studio Soeps is interested in. Figure 2: The current brand of Eindhoven. IMAGINATION. We bedenken in het LAB vanuit ons HART met de KENNIS die we hebben. AWARE. Wij maken BEWUST keuzes die (ook) op lange termijn goed zijn voor stad en mens. UNCONVENTIONAL Het vermogen om ANDERS te durven denken. X COLLABORATION. OPEN. Je bent HARTELIJK en daarom van harte WELKOM om mee te doen. De enorme drang om SAMEN te willen WERKEN. =. ENERGY REALISATION. Zorgt voor het ontstaan van unieke SYNERGIE. EXPERIMENT. We prototypen het is het TESTBED vanuit ons HOOFD met de KUNDE die we bezitten. We maken het in de FABRIEK met onze HANDEN waarmee we de KASSA laten rinkelen. Optimistic We betreden de wereld POSITIEF. The project of “Museum door de Stad” is often referred to as a pop-up museum because of the traveling outdoor installations, but there are some major differences between “Museum door de Stad” and traditional pop-up museums. Firstly, traditional pop-up museums are often meant as a community event, where visitors and community members can bring additional objects/stories to contribute to the exhibition [19]. This is not the case with Museum door de Stad, they create and exhibit their own installations specifically designed for a certain theme/experience. The second difference is that pop-up museums are often an event that lasts for a short amount of time and are set in a specific location that is tied to the exhibition itself, such as the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History pop-up museum about their previous Chinatown [19]. However, the installations that are created for Museum door de Stad are not bound to a certain location and can be used for a longer time. Such as one of the current installations “Dataapparaat”[6], which has been used in many different locations and themes since it was first used. Also, not unlike traditional pop-up museums, there is currently a trend in museums where they are changing from being collection-centred to being more community-centred and accessible to the public [5]. Museums are having an active role in the acquisition of new knowledge through new and engaging experiences [16]. Visiting a museum is no longer an. experience of unidirectional information output, it integrates interaction with the purposes of learning and education, entertainment and collaboration [17,18,20]. In order to attract younger and wider audiences, it has also become increasingly popular to design interactive installations [12]. Specifically, interaction in the museum context can be considered as experiences where visitors can change the content and control the information they receive through gestures or actions taken on the installation [16]. There are multiple ways to apply the interactivity in museum installations, these can be divided into two main types: tangible approaches, such as drawers, doors,knobs and books, and intangible approaches such as gesture-based or multi touch screens, eye-tracking software and kiosks. Many installations integrate both types to achieve a higher degree of interactivity [9]. There are different frameworks to evaluate interactive museum installations [9,13,15]. In her paper, Lígia Gonçalves [16] definides M-Dimension as a framework for Evaluating and Comparing Interactive Installations in Museums which includes the parameters: Adequacy, Area integration, Collaboration, Entertainment, Education, Feedback, Reuse, Simplicity, Structure, Visibility. These parameters provide a clear structure to design and evaluate interactive museum installations. The purposes of interactive installations are becoming more and more complex with the development of human-computer interaction in museums. Besides the simple function of offering information to the audiences, gaining information and data from audiences is becoming more important. This data is mostly used for the improvement of the museum experiences. In other words, an interactive installation as an intermediary is expected to collect data and provide personalized experience to visitors by gathering and processing their data [20]. In the context of museum installations, data is anything that can be measured, recorded and analysed. Which includes subjective data such as opinions on specific topics, objective data such as participant numbers, time and heatmaps in space [3]. There are many possibilities to gather the aforementioned data by means of applying interaction into museum installations [20]. This causes the participants to be less conscious of their data being collected, and they are more engaged into museum experience compared to traditional ways such as using surveys and polls..

(3) There is a typical process of interactive computerbased installations where the participant-generated content and other experience related data is stored in a database. This data is then used to create a personalized gift, such as booklet or postcard, at the end of the experience for each participant. This is considered as a way of visualizing data for each participant. The visualization of data through an interactive installation not only creates a meaningful and understandable feedback to participants, but also allows deep insights into behaviour of participants to curators and museum professionals [20]. The collected data can also be used to apply optimisation or predictive algorithms to form a deeper insight and a bigger vision of the installation. Combining the knowledge of machine learning, it is possible to forecast the behaviour trends of participants in order to optimise processes by taking an advanced action [18]. Additionally, It is important to mention the collection of personal and private data in the beginning of any museum experience. All data that is collected, should be stored and used in an ethical and secure way following the EU’s data protection laws [4].. DESIGN PROCESS First directions The design process for this project started with an initial brainstorming session. This brainstorming session was done mostly to explore different directions, possible technologies, interesting interactions and different experiences we could offer to the visitors of the installation. From this brainstorm multiple ideas we sketched out and given visual form to develop an understanding of what they would look like and to communicate the vision of our ideas to each other. After we completed this first brainstorming exercise we had two initial directions that we wanted to go in. Firstly we wanted our installation to have interesting and engaging interactions. During the brainstorming sessions we already had ideas to make certain actions, such as answering questions or making choices, more interesting by changing the way people interact with objects, or by making the actions themselves into small games / puzzles for people to play. Secondly, we found that we wanted to focus on the future of Eindhoven. Since we had to adapt our installation to the theme of a 100 years of Eindhoven, which could mean that we either focused on the past, present or future of Eindhoven. During the brainstorming sessions we mostly came back to a different way of showing and letting visitors experience the Eindhoven of the past. The first Concept With these two directions in mind we participated in the “Design Marathon Eindhoven 2019”. At the. Figure 3: A brainstorm sketch. Figure 4: Clustering ideas during the design marathon.. start of the marathon we collected all the ideas we had come up with before the marathon started and organised them based on themes and experiences using the K-J method[10]. We then started selecting and combining the ones we found the most interesting or promising to come up with new iterations and ideas. The marathon resulted in a concept called “Find our Future”. This concept allowed its audience to share their visions of the city of the future. The installation would then provide them with visual feedback on how their decisions would impact the city image, as well as showing them what choices other people made. The goal of this concept was to make people actively think about their collective future. They had limited options, and were urged to prioritize their values. The data gathered from this would provide insights in what the general public finds important. After the Design Marathon we reflected on the design and choices we made during the event. We came to the conclusion that we the current iteration was lacking in terms of interaction. Also, the connection to Eindhoven and the theme of “100 jaar Eindhoven” was not present in the concept. There was more to explore around the concept overall. Therefore we did multiple, separate sessions where we addressed parts around the concept of voting to see what aspects we could keep, which ones we should improve and what needed to be added/ removed to move the concept in a better direction. We addressed the way people get their tokens to vote, what data they would be giving and how we were going to use it, and what we were going to use to visualize the votes.. Figure 5: Design marathon result.. Figure 6: Voting platform concept.

(4) The Second iteration After these discussions and redesign, we chose a new direction for the voting concept. The new concept revolves around gathering data about the visitors in order to predict their choice at the voting part of the installation. We chose this direction because we wanted to create awareness for how machine learning could be used to predict what people want with only seemingly trivial data. To do this we decided to add two additional steps to the installation. Firstly we wanted to have a meaningful way of gathering data from visitors to use in the installation to personalize the experience. So we decided to add an extra part to the installation where users answer questions about their motivations / demographics in an interactive way, that we could then use to predict their choice. Secondly, we also wanted the question that was voted on to be more connected to eindhoven and the answers to be more meaningful and less generic. Therefore we decided to make the questions about what choices should be made for a certain area in Eindhoven, where the answers would be more concrete (instead of more “nature”, the answers could be, “add a park”). We also parted with the idea to have a changing city based on votes. Instead we wanted to actively visualize each vote so people could see their votes, as well as other visitors’ votes. See figure 7 for the storyboard of this concept. However, after discussing this concept with our project coaches and client we found that this concept had another set of issues, mostly with the prediction and machine learning aspects. After taking in their feedback and evaluating the concept ourselves, we concluded that the prediction mechanic was making the complete experience to complicated for a museum installation. There were two main reasons for this conclusion, the first one being clarity. With the current amount of steps that the visitors would need to take in order to completely finish the experience, a lot of instructions would need to be made in order for people to understand what each step does, why it is important for the experience and how to interact with the installation. This would create a lot of clutter, might cause confusion for visitors and would overall take attention away from the experience we were trying to create, as well as increase the amount of time that would be needed to interact with the installation by a lot. Furthermore, to raise awareness about how machine. learning, we would need to explain how the predictions are made, which might cause confusion with the visitors, so lots of instructions would be needed. However, lots of instructions can cause boredom, which we wanted to avoid as well. Therefore we would need to find a way to balance the amount of information given against the amount of instruction needed to get the full experience, which turned out to be very difficult. Mid term Demo Day Because of these reasons we decided to abandon the idea of predicting people’s choices based on their information. However, we still found the concept of voting for certain aspects an opportunity to offer an engaging experience to participants, even without predicting the outcome. Therefore, we decided to continue with the same concept to develop for the mid term. This iteration was meant to be used throughout the city of Eindhoven in the main areas of Center, Stratum, Gestel, Strijp, Tongelre and Woensel. Where we wanted to test the mentality of the visitors towards the city and then ask them what they would value for the future of the city.. self-defined values to create the prototype : Technology, Social development, Sustainable Innovations, Freedom and Equality, and Vitality (Firgure 8). When we discussed this iteration with our coaches and the stakeholders of this project, they were excited about the concept and the type of data we would be gathering. Additionally, the concept was in line with something that they had been working on themselves. Studio Soeps had been tinkering with the idea of using 6 values to identify people’s thoughts about the city of Eindhoven. They also mentioned that the connection step was interesting because it gave them an idea of how involved the visitor was with Eindhoven. Since Studio Soeps is also involved with the creation of the brand of Eindhoven, they would like it if the connection step would also involve the brand of Eindhoven. In this way, it is possible to see how many people are familiar with the brand and if they identify with it as much as Soeps believes they do. First user test. The concept was divided in two main parts: the connection part, and the voting part. In the connection part we would try to get an idea of the visitor’s connection to Eindhoven by asking them three questions. The installation would then give them a colored token that was based on their answers to these questions. They would then be able to take this token to the voting stage, where to could scan/hand it in to vote for the values they thought were important. We started with 5,. With these directions and feedback we decided that it was time to create a prototype to test the current iteration of the concept with users. After some consideration, we decided to create a digital version of the installation for the easy transporting. This way we could test people in different parts of Eindhoven, bring it to the stakeholders and get data from people outside of Eindhoven (which might visit the installation as well). It was important for us to be able to test in different locations because the final installation would also be mobile and have possible visitors from outside the city.. Figure 7: The storyboard of the predicition concept.. Figure 8: The prototype of the voting platform..

(5) To create a digital version of a physical experience we had to make some sacrifices in terms of interaction and experiences. For example, the way visitors were supposed to answer the questions about their connection to Eindhoven, was by moving actual sliders that would light up the installation. However, in the digital version we had to fit everything on one screen, with digital sliders that couldn’t give the same experience. Similar sacrifices were made in the voting part of the installation. Here we had to digitally give visitors a ticket that they could use to vote, which would show their vote on the platform on the screen. However, this had not the same type of interaction as a physical ticket that you could scan would have. Apart from these sacrifices and changes, the digital prototype was fully operational and able to let people go through the experience of the installation.The prototype consisted of 5 different screens (see Appendix A). With this digital version of the installation, 14 people ranging between the ages of 19-81 from Eindhoven and Breda were asked to go through the complete experience. At the beginning of the installation we asked them to “think out loud” so we could get insights in what the participants were thinking, what choices they considered, what parts of the installation were good/bad, etc. After the participants were finished with going through the experience for the first time by themselves, we asked them to go through it again. However, this time, the participant was asked to fill in an experience map.This map simply asked them to rate their experience at each of the 5 stages between very negative and very positive. After each stage the participant was interviewed about that stage on their thoughts, why they chose this experience level and what they think could be improved. After doing the tests and holding the interviews, we got lots of valuable feedback about the overall concept of the installation, as well as the individual parts. To evaluate the main concept of the installation, we mostly looked at the experience maps to get an overview of what parts of the installation the users dropped in experience level.. Figure 9: A participant doing a user test. Looking at the average experience graph, we could see that there was a drop in engagement and perceived experience after both the connection and the voting parts of the installation. The information we got from the interviews also gave us insights into what caused these drops. The average experiences of the participants can be seen in figure 11. The main causes for the drops in perceived experience that we could identify were: •. The connection between the color and the questions on the connection stage was not interesting to some people, or they didn’t notice it at all. Furthermore, a number of people didn’t like the color they got, or didn’t understand what it was supposed to do, mostly people didn’t fully get the relation between the connection part and the voting part of the installation.. •. Some people mentioned that they felt like they didn’t have enough context throughout the installation. In the connection part they felt a bit overwhelmed by the questions, and on the voting part they had trouble with understanding the different areas. Additionally, the feedback that was given at the end of the installation was a bit disappointing to some people. They wanted to receive more context about the area they voted for, or get more insights into what other people voted. However, they also mentioned that the feedback that was given was interesting to them even without the other context.. To get an overview of the given feedback for each step of the installation, we clustered all the comments into themes per step to identify what would need the most attention. The main conclusions we could draw from this was: •. We needed to increase the quality of the visual elements such as the videos, images and the overall style of the installation. Also multiple participants mentioned that the first screen of the installation was not very interesting to them. Which is important to the installation because that screen is supposed to be able to draw people towards the installation.. •. The interactions with the installation in multiple steps was not good enough. Participants mentioned that the interaction for the sliders in the connection step of the installation was difficult to understand, gave no feedback and did not provide them with a fun experience. The same was said for other parts of the installation where people were asked to interact with the digital version. We had already foreseen these comments, because we knew we sacrificed parts of the interaction when we translated the concept to a digital variant, but the feedback that we got on this subject was still very useful.. •. The last major feedback we got was about the instructions in the different steps of the installation. Participants mentioned that instructions were unclear in the connection step, as well as the voting step of the installation..

(6) Implementation of results After all the feedback, suggestions and comments were evaluated and organised, decisions needed to be made on how to improve the concept and its individual parts. Some of them were quite minor, such as changing the colors and font to that of the Eindhoven museum, others were more impactful. The first more impactful change we made to the core concept was done to address the comments about wanting to know more about the other visitors and their choices. To do this we first wanted to allow the visitors to see why other people voted for the value they chose by asking them to type what the value meant to them. However, there can be some difficulties with allowing visitors to write whatever they want, as well as the extra time and instruction that it would take to implement this step in the installation. Therefore we decided to do things differently: During the voting part of the installation (which would be physical in this version) the visitors could press the other votes to display what the area meant to those visitors. After voting themselves the visitor would then be asked the same question as the visitors before them: “You voted for [the area], what does this mean to you specifically?”. To answer this question the visitor would be able to press 1 of 5 buttons which would each have a different answer to the question. After choosing and pressing a button, the visitors vote would show up on the installation, for the next visitors to press.. •. We added some information about what the connection between the visitor and Eindhoven means on the feedback screen after the visitor has voted. This information would be based on the choices the user made during the installation. The idea behind this addition was to make the feedback more personal and give the visitor a better idea of their connection to Eindhoven.. •. We also decided to add an extra stage to the installation after the visitors received their feedback on their votes. In this stage we would display some information about the future plans for Eindhoven in the area they voted for. This was added because multiple people in the tests mentioned that they lacked some form of closure on their votes and wanted to know more about the topic.. We also made changes to physically realise the installation. We made the sliders for the connection step into physical sliders with LED’s to show the visitors’ personal colors, added a printer that would print physical tickets that visitors could actually scan at the voting step of the installation. The voting step itself was translated from a digital circle into a physical shape with coloured light buttons to portray other people’s votes and we added buttons to allow people to specify what the value they chose means to them. Additionally, we updated all the digital content in terms of images, videos and animations.. The next change we made was to address the lack of context that some of the participants in the test had expressed. In addition to the change mentioned above, which we had imagined to also help with providing context around the vote areas, this change was mostly aimed at providing context around the choices the visitor had made. To do this we added two things to the feedback on the visitors vote:. Figure 10: The evaluation map.. Figure 11: The average perceived user experience per step in the digital installation(the average customer journey map)..

(7) CONNECTION. Figure 12: The CONNECTION protoype. CONNECTION is an outdoor museum installation that will be placed and moved through the city of Eindhoven, including the city center, Gestel, Stratum, Strijp, Tongelre, and Woensel. The design offers people an engaging and informative experience. The objective of the installation is providing the visitors with an enjoyable and interactive experience to express their view on the future of Eindhoven and communicate these visions with the public. This way, the installation plays a role in promoting the spirit of the city and enhancing the connections between the residents and the city of Eindhoven. The long-term goal of the installation is to see if there is any relation between the visitors’ mentality and their opinion towards the future development of Eindhoven. The content of the experience is based on the theme of “100 jaar Eindhoven”, and the appearance of the installation was designed to be aligned with the previous installations from Eindhoven museum.. Design of CONNECTION The design of the installation is divided in two stages. The first stage is the “Connection generation”, in which the system personalizes a ticket for each participant by establishing the connection level between the person and the city, shown in Figure 13. At this stage,visitors need to answer three sample questions after watching an animation. The answers to these questions determine the connection level between the person and Eindhoven. Participants answer the three questions by adjusting sliders, which change their personal color code according to mapped HSV values. The personalized color ticket is created when participants confirm their choices, and is printed from the installation.. After receiving their voting ticket, visitors can go forward to the “Voting” stage, as the Figure 14. Firstly, they receive the question “ What do you think is most important for the future development of Eindhoven?” There are six values (Economy, Living, Public Space, Leisure, Culture, and Education) on the voting platform where they can vote for one of the values. The results from other visitors will be present on the platform where it shows their colors in each area. Participants can press the lights belonging to other visitors to see their thoughts behind each vote. This allows the visitor to interact with the previous participants and exchange information indirectly by exploring their thoughts and discovering a deeper meaning on each value. It is assumed that participants will have a better understanding of each value and make a more educated decision. Next, the visitor can vote by scanning their ticket under a certain value to light up “their” light with their personalized color on the platform. After that, the visitor will be asked a question about what the value they voted for means them. Following these questions, the data feedback stage starts. Participants can not only see their level of connection with Eindhoven, but also the statistical data of their votes compared to the big data gathered from previous visitors. In the end, additional information about the future development on the value that the participant voted for closes the experience, leaving the participants with the possibility of educational reflection and future expectations. After leaving the installation, all participants will have received a physical ticket as a gift and an educational and engaging experience.. Figure 13: The first stage “Connection generation” of the installation.. Underlying Design Principles In terms of interactive museum installations, there are several main principles to evaluate the level and quality of interaction, also called dimensions. To evaluate this installation and it’s interactions we used parts of the framework provided by Gonçalves, Campos, & Sousa [15].. Feedback From the user test after the mid term, one of the findings suggested that feedback can keep participants involved and informed about what is going on in the process. It can also encourage participants to complete the installation and improve their interactive experience. It is necessary that the installation effectively informs the visitors of results, progress, state changes and information on how much is left till the end [15]. Therefore, the interface design includes informative details that can be triggered by actions such as pressing a button. Also, clear statement are shown when it’s time to move on to the next stage. Additionally, the installation provides visitors with data feedback, see Figure 15 for an example.. Figure 14: The second stage “Voting” of the installation.

(8) The first user test results showed that the participants expect more feedback on the value they chose. In other words, they wanted to receive more information about the value they care about and vote for. This also has a better effect if they can see changes happening after they vote for certain value. To achieve giving participants rich physical feedback a colored light representing each participant and their color is turned on after voting. Additionally, useful information about the value which has been voted for is given at the end of the process as shown in Figure 16.. Furthermore, pressing a button not only provides information , but also increases the level of engagement. Another decision we made is to use a start button with a quick identification on the starting page to replace the previous explanation through long texts, shown in Figure 17. In this way, we kept the interface being simple but more attractive and clear. It also provides visitors with a clear indication of where to begin interacting with the installation.. Structure. Providing knowledge and entertainment are some of the fundamental principles of a museum installation. But they are also some of the main reasons for people to join the experience. To offer useful and interesting knowledge in an interactive, but relaxing way to keep participants engaged actively, all the questions and content are carefully selected. From throughout the installation, the structure of the content transfers from the past to the present and future of Eindhoven. It also enhances participants‘ curiosity to complete the activity.. The structure of an installation is not only about the organization of digital content, but also addresses if the physical components are used efficiently and effectively. The user test has been done to see if the participants are able to understand the different steps and elements of the installation, as well as the general purpose of it. The main problem that was encountered in terms of structure was that the personalized color felt not related to the rest of the process. In order to improve the relevancy of the personalized color, the elements of color were added in tangible and intangible ways throughout the installation, such as the light changing sliders in the kiosk, the printed ticket that is used for voting, the colored lights on the voting platform, and some elements on the interface.. Reuse One of the requests from the Eindhoven museum is that the installation should be capable of adapting to different themes and situations. Which means it should be reusable after changing the visual elements so that interfaces are still consistent. Therefore a majority of the physical interactive elements are made in such a way that they are not connected to the digital content of the installation. This way, the digital content can be changed to adapt to suit the needs of the installation, while the interactive elements can be reused without having to change them.. Simplicity Simplicity can be misunderstood and misapplied easily as a design principle [15]. In order to design the interaction being about genuine elegance and parsimony instead of “ simple-minded reductionism” [2], its interaction needs to run with every participant successfully. In any case of interruption happens during interaction due to a lack of instructions or insufficient identification, the design is not deemed to be sufficiently simple. To avoid this, we tested our design with more than 20 participants to make sure they are able to go through the process and explore it independently. Tips or short explanations are added in every step where confusion might arise for participants. For example, participants can gain a better understanding on the six values through pressing others’ vote, the step is advertised on the screen of the installation.. Learning and Entertainment. Collaboration. Figure 15: The interface of data feedback.. Figure 16: The information about its future plan provided in the end of the experience.. Enjoying a social experience is one of the main reasons why participants decide to join an interaction. To achieve this without adding the complexity, the installation is designed a unique way to let visitors communicate and collaborate with others indirectly. For instance, the voting platform can be easily seen and even explored without joining the installation from the beginning, which allows all the visitors around it to discuss the contents together. People can see other people’s opinions by pressing their vote lights. Example as Figure 18. Additionally, The voting result is contributed to by all Figure 17: The starting interface. participants, each vote matters. With the same goal of development for the future, people compete but also collaborate with each other by voting for what they support. People don’t experience the installation at the same time but they work together on the same platform that records everyone’s decision and presents the results in real time. There is a possibility that a participant’s decision can be affected by seeing people’s choices, but it is also interesting to see how people react to different situations.. Technology and Realization Besides the physical parts of the installation, all computing parts are programmed on Processing with Arduino. The Arduino’s control all the electronics including the lights, buttons and color sensors. Processing reacts in real time with different scenarios depending on the choices from the visitors. Each visitor has their own color code, vote and meaning for their vote. All the actions and choices they make together with timing is stored in a database by processing. During the data feedback stage, participants can see the overview of their votes compared with the entire database.. Figure 18: The interfaces of exploring others’ thought..

(9) System structure and Data Validation. Based these decisions, five types of data are selected.. To take into account the situations where participants may join or leave the experience at any point of the process which will bring invalid data. Therefore, we designed the system in such a way to decrease the possibility of errors happening. For example, the system remembers participants’ personal colors from the beginning. After that the system will only count votes that it recognizes as personal colors, other colors will not be recognized. Another situation that might occur is when a few people are interacting the installation at the same time. In these situations, the system allows one participant to play while others also have the chance to explore and get an idea about the installation. In this case, the solution is that people are able to press the buttons and explore the participants’ opinions on the platform, but the system only reacts by presenting. During this time it doesn’t record any data or allows the system to progress past the voting step. Only when a ticket is scanned will it advance to the next step. In each step data is saved only if a participant confirms that he wants to proceed with the certain action.. 1. The scores from the three connection questions; 2.The choice of the value; 3.The visitor’s meaning of that value; 4.The visitor’s total amount of explorations of other votes and in which areas they explored; 5. The total amount of time a visitor spent at the installation; respectively. Datatype five can be used to verify the data from participants by checking if the time spent is within a normal scope.. The electronics The sensors that were used: 1.Potentiometers used as sliders to answer each question. The principle is by controlling its resistance to adjust the color of the light strap. 2.LED Light strap are used at ticket creating stage and voting stage. It represents the personalized color of each participant. 3.Buttons are used for let participants to confirm their choice, react on participants’ action as well as validate the data. 4.Color sensor can scan the color of ticket to send signal to system to turn on the light.. METHODOLOGY We conducted two user tests over the course of the project, the first one was held to evaluate the experience and to improve the interaction of the installation. The methodology and results of this test can be found in the design process. The second user test was aimed at collecting data for the user data study. This section will mainly be focused on the second user test to explain the goal of the study, how the data was collected and analyzed, and how the data can be read and used for future applications. One of the questions that needed to be answered for this study, was what data should be collected and analyzed in order for us to be able to draw conclusions from it. Because we were interested in our visitor’s opinions we decided to focus on data that visualizes a participant’s choices and decisions. Also, we needed to consider if any data can be used to examine any invalid data that might be gathered because participants not finishing the experience.. Participants We had 20 participants in total, they are all people that either live, study, work or have visited Eindhoven. The sample includes participants with different genders, ages and nationalities because the target audience of the installation can be anyone who will visit the exhibition. In our sample, the age of the participants is between 19 to 54 years old, gender mixed. Most of the participants in the sample were dutch but it also includes internationals. All the collected data and conducted user tests were done with the approval of the ethical committee of the TU/e, and with the informed consent of all participants. Refer to appendix E for the signed consent forms.. Material The design probe is a digital adaptation of the real installation. Participants can interact with the interface that includes all the interactions that are in the real installation, but in a digital way. The system is runs on Processing and records all data automatically and saves it in a csv file. Participants are tested on a laptop and are asked to go through the installation by themselves.. Procedure Before the testing starts, we introduced the installation to the participants, then the participants were asked to read and sign the consent form. Later on they could start the experience on the laptop and explore it independently. If they experienced any problems or had questions, we guided them with a short explanation about how to continue. Since the tests were done on a computer, there was no special setting or data collection. The processing program recorded all the data while it was running automatically. The test was done after participants went through the program. No additional interviews were held after the test.. Data Analysis The data from the test was gathered by exporting it from the processing application that was used for the tests to a .csv file. The data from the csv files was then imported and processed in Excel. To to sort the visitors per vote area and calculate the average connection score per vote area. We then looked at each of the areas, and what meaning the visitors gave to that area..

(10) RESULTS In order to find the relation between the gathered data, we visualized them in different ways. There is an obvious finding between the data of people’s connection level with the value they voted for. As shown in Figure 19, we can see that from the people who voted for living also have a relatively high score in connection to Eindhoven. Additionally Public space is also one of the popular choices within the six values. However, the people that voted for this area have a lower average connection. Another interesting result is that Economy got no votes from 20 participants.. Additionally, as the Figure 20 shows, the two most popular values, Living and Public Space, both had interesting results in what participants thought it meant for them. In Living, 4 out of 6 people stated that they thought that housing resources in Eindhoven need to be improved. In Public space, 3 out of five participants want either more or better green areas in Eindhoven.. Figure 20: The bar table about the meaning of the value the participants voted for. The options in each value are all different. The y-axis is the amount of participants, x-axis means each value. (Option 2 in Living is Housing resources, Option 2 in Public Space is Green areas) Figure 19: The bar table of the relationship between participants’ connection score and the value they voted for. ( The y-axis is the total score of each participant. The blue columns are representing the choice of each participant. The red columns are the mean values of each area together with the standard deviation).. From the data that was gathered in this study, no interesting findings could be found on the relation between the area the participants explored, and their final choice. The reason we were interested in this statistic is to see if participants could be influenced by other visitors and their opinions. But because the amount of data is to little, no meaningful patterns could be found. The last type of data that was gathered, was the total amount of time a visitor spent at the installation. We wanted to use this data to be able to verify the data. The average amount of time spent on the experience is 3 minutes and 50 seconds. However, in the real installation users are expected to take longer, due to the physical nature of the elements that were not present in the digital version. Therefore, the average time from this test can’t be used for an actual installation..

(11) DISCUSSION One of the main goals of the installation we designed was to find out if there is a relation between a person’s connection to the city of Eindhoven and their opinions about what values are important for the future of the city. To test this we made an installation with two main parts that each addressed a side of the relation we tried to find. By analysing the results from this test we can see indications of different relations between the connection to Eindhoven and the values. The results also highlight that certain areas and meanings might be deemed more important / in need of improvement by the participants that went through the experience. Furthermore, tests during the design process of the installation have helped with evaluating elements of the installation, leading to a more interesting installation that will have a higher perceived experience among visitors. The first indication that can be seen from the results is that the “Living” area is both in a shared 1st place in votes, as well as having the highest average of connection scores with a relatively low deviation from the mean. The same argument can be made for the second most popular area, “Public Space”. It has a lower average of connection scores but also a relatively low deviation from the mean from individual results. This suggests that visitors with a connection score within the range of these areas are more likely to choose these areas. Furthermore, in the results from the 20 participants in the study, 0 participants voted for “Economy” and only 2 voted for “Culture”. This can be an indication that the participants didn’t think as this value as the most pressing value currently in Eindhoven. Additionally, it can be seen that a higher amount of visitors voted for the options “Living” and “Public Space”, hinting that the visitors of the installation in our test think these areas are currently more important to develop than the others. Additionally the results suggests what the areas mean to the visitors that went through the installation. For example, from the visitors that voted for “Living”, 67% said that it meant to them that “Housing Resources” need to be improved and in the “Public Space” area, 60% expressed that it meant that they think Eindhoven needs to improve their “Green Areas”. By looking at these specifications, larger conclusions might be able to be drawn from the data as well. One of these conclusions might be that people that have a close connection to Eindhoven, want to see improvements in the city’s housing resources, which might be information that either Studio Soeps, Eindhoven Museum or other parties that are involved with Eindhoven are interested in. Furthermore, when evaluating the current installation using the M-dimensions framework [15], we can also see that the types of interactions we used for the design of the installation score reasonably high different dimensions that make up the framework.. However, when looking at the results from the study, some caution is needed when making statements about the data that was gathered. First of all, the sample size of the study is not large enough for the data to be significant. Which means that, while the current results show promising information, there is currently no way to determine if the data is applicable to larger audiences. Additionally, although the data was gathered from participants with different demographics, a large portion of them were students with different backgrounds, which might have caused other impurities in the data we gathered. Therefore, we suggest for future research to be conducted to see if the indications of relations we found can be replicated in a more statistically significant way. Secondly, the results of the study conducted might be susceptible to a social bias on the side of the participants. When conducting the tests, the results of earlier participants were also visible as votes to explore. This means that the participants may have been influenced by other participants’ votes because certain areas were obviously more popular than other s. However, we have decided not to eliminate this bias from the test to stay true to the situation as it would be when the installation would stand in a public space where visitors might also be influenced by the same factors. Additionally, the results of the final test might not have produced accurate results due to the fact that the installation was once again adjusted to a digital version. Just as in the user test during the design process, we made the decision to make a digital version of the installation for easier transportation and testing. This portable version had different interactions and mechanics to adapt the physical parts and this might have influenced the participants to fill in different results or caused fluctuations. Aside from the above mentioned drawbacks on the gathered data, we believe that the hints of relations that might exist, and the conclusions that can be drawn from them can prove to be useful to stakeholders in the future. Additionally, the experience graphs and feedback from the previous tests, as well as the theoretical evaluation give a good impression on how the installation provides value in terms of user experience for the visitors, which was one of the main goals of the project next to data gathering..

(12) CONCLUSION In this project, the objective was to create an interactive museum installation for the “Museum door de Stad” initiative on the theme “100 jaar Eindhoven”. The installations main goals were to provide users with an interesting and enjoyable experience and to gain insights in the relation between visitors’ connection to Eindhoven and their values towards the future of the city. To do this we created an experience that establishes people’s connection to the city of Eindhoven and allows them to voice their opinions on what they think is important, while also providing them with feedback on their choice and other visitors’ opinions.. The results from this project suggest that there might be an interesting relation between a person’s connection to a city, and what they think is important for the future development of that city. However, due to the sample size and other limitations of this study, we are currently unable to provide concrete evidence to support these relations. Therefore future research will be needed to see if the findings in this paper can be solidified with more data and future iterations of museum installations. Furthermore, we believe this project might have opened up a way for future research to use the mentioned relations in order to create prediction models on what the citizens of a city find important, that might be able to be used to predict society’s wants and needs on a bigger scale.. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Hereby we want to thank our coaches Jean-Bernard Martens and Loes van Renswouw for their valuable support, constructive feedback and insights over the course of the project. We also want to thank Carine Lallemand, all the support staff and students from the Vitality squad for their support, feedback and community. Additionally we want to thank Daan Melis from Studio Soeps and Ward Rennen from the Eindhoven Museum for supporting us and providing us with valuable insights during the project..

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