Interaction Geography: Museums

The video animations and figures on this page use interaction geography to visually explore how a 6 year old boy named Blake and his family engage with one another and gallery spaces during their approximately 1 hour visit to a cultural heritage museum. Blake is visiting the museum with his brother (Jeans), sister (Lily), mother (Mae), and his sister’s fiancé (Adhir).

  • Shapiro, B.R., Hall, R., & Owens, D. (2017). Developing & Using Interaction Geography in a Museum. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 12(4), 377-399. PDF

    Shapiro, B.R., & Hall, R. (2018). Personal Curation in a Museum. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction,Vol. 2, CSCW, Article 158. ACM, New York, NY. PDF

    Shapiro, B.R., & Silvis, D. (2023). Animated Movements, Animating Methods: An Interaction Geography Approach to Space and Affect in Early Childhood Education. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. PDF

  • This ongoing work is made possible by wonderful collaborations with our museum partners, many generous museum visitors and families who participated in this research and the National Science Foundation.

Animating a young boy’s complete museum visit. This animation video shows the movement of a six year old boy named Blake across an approximately 1 hour museum visit. Movement is shown across a floorplan and as it unfolds upwards in a space-time view. In this space-time view, the z-axis encodes time, and the x/y axes correspond to the floor plan. Thicker lines in the space-time view indicate periods of time when Blake is not moving. Blake's movement is shown as a red path where blue segments of Blake's path indicate gallery spaces where he is running.

Animating Blake’s Tour. This video animation shows the movement of a six year old boy named Blake (blue path) and Adhir (25 years old, orange path) during their approximately 9 minute visit to a museum gallery space together —- one of the gallery spaces where Blake is running as identified in the previous figure. Once again, movement is shown across a floorplan and as it unfolds upwards in a space-time view. In this space-time view, the z-axis encodes time, and the x/y axes correspond to the floor plan. Thicker lines in the space-time view indicate periods of time when they are not moving. A key insight visible and experienced through this visualization is Blake’s several attempts to run back and forth across the gallery space trying to move Adhir away from an exhibit focusing on Hank Williams. Blake is finally successfully on leading Adhir on a “tour” of the gallery when their paths intertwine mid-way through their visit.

Exploring Blake’s Tour. This figure shows IGS screenshots from the previous video that explore how Blake’s interaction with Adhir and his tour unfold across his approximately 9 minute visit to this gallery space.

Animating the Bluegrass Family’s visit to this gallery space. This video animation shows the movement of all five family members of this family (called the Bluegrass Family) during their approximately 9 minute visit to this gallery space.