A matter of motivation: Designing engaging interactive technologies for museums

TY - CONF

T1 -  A matter of motivation: Designing engaging interactive technologies for museums

AU - Iversen, Ole Sejer

AU - Dindler, Christian

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - We explore the concepts of motivation and motives in relation to inform the design of digital interactive technologies for museum exhibitions. A central issue for museums is to create strong links between the subject matter knowledge and the everyday life of the children. Pursuing such an agenda entails a commitment to understanding structures of children curiosity, interest, and engagement and the potential intersections between the everyday life of children and museum practice. Although engagement may be said to be a pervasive phenomenon, it is obvious that some technologies and exhibition spaces are more successful than others in spurring this engagement. We suggest that digital technology can potentially support this “double move” in which subject matter knowledge is naturally integrated into the children’s everyday life if designers take into consideration the hierarchy of motives and motivation when designing the digital museum installations. Our conceptualization of motives and motivation is based on Cultural-Historical Theory and especially the work of Vygotsky (1982) and Hedegaard (2002) as these perspectives capture the dynamics of motivation as it develops in context.

AB - We explore the concepts of motivation and motives in relation to inform the design of digital interactive technologies for museum exhibitions. A central issue for museums is to create strong links between the subject matter knowledge and the everyday life of the children. Pursuing such an agenda entails a commitment to understanding structures of children curiosity, interest, and engagement and the potential intersections between the everyday life of children and museum practice. Although engagement may be said to be a pervasive phenomenon, it is obvious that some technologies and exhibition spaces are more successful than others in spurring this engagement. We suggest that digital technology can potentially support this “double move” in which subject matter knowledge is naturally integrated into the children’s everyday life if designers take into consideration the hierarchy of motives and motivation when designing the digital museum installations. Our conceptualization of motives and motivation is based on Cultural-Historical Theory and especially the work of Vygotsky (1982) and Hedegaard (2002) as these perspectives capture the dynamics of motivation as it develops in context.

M3 - Paper

T2 - ISCAR

Y2 - 17 December 2010

ER -