I have been learning how the history museum runs and learning how I can best help them. This week they were the site of a swearing in ceremony for naturalization and the entire week was spent preparing the room, which is the old courtroom which still has its old judges bench, for the event which was held Thursday.
As a result, I was focused on getting some of the minor things finished such as mapping out the best way to get guests around the building while keeping the exhibits and general history of the place intact. When I was making the app, the premise was that someone could take a tour of the architecture and history or a tour of the exhibits or do some court room experiences. They had the choice of following along chronologically with each tour, but in the process they would be skipping parts of the other tours, so if they decided to do all three, they would have to essentially walk around in a circle a few times.
The guests could also just walk where they wanted to and scan a QR code that they encounter and it would tell them what they were looking at or give them information, but without context, it wouldn’t be as helpful.
Thinking about things from the perspective of someone who has a more difficult time getting around, I have had to think about ways in which I can set up the app to help them, while at the same time making it informative for them. They might not be able to see the QR codes easily and need assistance and they wouldn’t want to go around in circles. So I came up with an idea to add to the app a tour for the visually impaired, which will be a sort of audio tour that can go over everything in one take, but not in as much detail.
So if a guest is in the big court room, it can give them the history of the court, tell about the famous North trial and also tell them about the exhibits that are located in the room, just as an overview. If they wanted to learn more, they could get assistance with each aspect of the room via QR code, so they wouldn’t have to come back. This is just in the planning phase so I don’t have a script or anything like that yet, but the idea will be to do a good enough job explaining to them, where they are standing, what is around them and the context of it so if they want more they can get it and if they don’t they can move on.
I end up giving myself more work each time I come up with new things like this but I think it will be worth it when it is all done because now the history center can attract guests that might not have considered coming. This will hopefully be paired with the 3d printed replicas of artifacts or hopefully haptic feedback gloves, if we ever get that funding.
