HCI Research
Digital Forums for Museum Visitors
The paper I selected, “Online Museum Discussion Forums: What Do We Have? What Do We Need?”, details the current implementations and issues of online discussion forums for museums. It starts off with a description of online forums that currently exist for museum visitors or art connoisseurs. Analyses of current forum data show that messages per thread tend to be consistent across any single forum with the exception of a handful of topics that would be considered the most popular threads of the application. Most threads are started by either museum staff or regular visitors of a museum who are interested in specific works within the museum. The forums described also showed that users did not tend to consistently post their thoughts, so most threads tended to “die” after a few months. Most forums have a built-in search functionality in order to help users quickly find their topics of interest. However, the paper also mentions the alienating effects that a digital community space can have on virtual participants. The forum experience was described as “lonely” for users that hope to interact with other participants digitally instead of in the physical museum space. I understand how this experience could be described as lonely since two participants who may want to share their thoughts on a specific museum piece would be unaware of the other’s contemplation on the same piece. Also, by having museum staff start a thread, it eases the pressure placed on other users who may want to post on a thread that has not necessarily started. Based on my own experience with chat rooms or other versions of digital forums, I believe this paper’s research on user trends in discussion forums to be true. I personally do not make it a habit to revisit forums that I may have posted to in the past, and I would not treat a museum forum any differently.
Reading this paper made me realize that my group could have placed more of an emphasis on the perspective of museum staff. They interact with potential users on a daily basis and frequently view the art that would be interpreted. Museum staff could be a helpful resource for inciting engagement by museum visitors on our digital platform. Also, our project could improve by providing some sort of incentive for users to return to the threads that they had already posted on or viewed. I worry that our design would be used out of curiosity by museum visitors but will be easily forgotten after one museum visit. But I believe that our use of voice messaging provides a closer sense of humanity between forum participants and could possibly alleviate some of the loneliness associated with digital forums. Voice messaging also allows users to communicate casually since they do not have to worry about spelling or sentence structure, which I see as an improvement on some of the current forums described within the paper.