Successful Strategies for Dealing With New Technology in Museums: A Case Study of Immersive Technology at the Immigration Museum, Melbourne

Abstract

What can museum staff learn from the adoption of new technology? New technologies not only have an impact on visitors, but also on museum staff as they have to deal every day both with visitors and the digital interactive object itself. This paper looks at how the museum staff at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne learnt to deal with an immersive environment, as part of an exhibition on Indian archaeology. The exhibition was designed without objects, the only one being the technological platform itself. The paper will also describe how the strategies adopted by the customer service staff changed over the 14 months of the exhibition, based on what they learnt from observing visitors, their own interpretation of visitors' behaviour, direct interaction with the visitors, comments collected and interaction with the researcher.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Prof. Sarah Kenderdine, Prof. Jeffrey Shaw, the Immigration Museum, Martin Gropius Bau, ZKM and the Swiss National Science Foundation. A special thanks to Soo Nazih Laouami, Customer Service Manager during my field work at the Immigration Museum and all the members of the customer service and security staff for their invaluable contribution to this paper through recorded interviews and informal conversations.

Notes

1. Videos and photos of PLACE‐Hampi can be seen and downloaded from the website: http://www.place-hampi.museum.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrizia Schettino

Patrizia Schettino completed her Ph.D. at TEC‐Lab, University of Lugano, Switzerland. She is currently undertaking research in design, cultural diversity and multimedia in museums. After completing a Master's in Design, Multimedia and Visual Communication at Politecnico in Milan, she worked as a multimedia designer in Milan and Paris and taught at Nuova Academia di Bella Arti, in Milan. She was an e‐learning consultant for the European Network ERIC (European Resources for Intercultural Communication), and was involved as a graphic designer and instructional designer in 12 e‐learning projects supported by the Swiss Virtual Campus in Switzerland. As filmmaker, storyteller and photographer, she has participated in several film festivals and exhibitions in Italy (POLI.design, Triennale, Milan, 1999; International Photography Award Viaggio in Basilicata, the 2006 and 2007 travelling exhibitions at the Potenza Film Festival, Potenza, 2006; Young Movie Festival, Potenza 2007 and 2009; and the Lucania Film Festival, Pisticci, 2006 and 2010). She has been visiting researcher at the Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media (INFIM), University of Tampere; the iCinema Center, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney; the Immigration Museum, Melbourne, and visiting Ph.D. scholar at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.