Satisfying personal needs at the museum: The role of digital technologies

Abstract

MedieKultur | Journal of media and communication research | ISSN 1901-9726 Article -Open section Published by SMID | Society of Media researchers In Denmark | www.smid.dk Th e online version of this text can be found open access at www.mediekultur.dk 176Th is paper investigates how museum visitors use digital technologies to mediate their general meaning-making process about artworks and other information they encounter throughout their museum experience.Concluding from a case study at the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen, this study suggests that visitors use digital technologies as a vehicle for satisfying one or more personal needs. In order to gain control over their experience, visitors used not only digital technologies provided by the museum but also their personal technologies.Th e article argues that both museums and visitors will derive great benefi ts by understanding the ways in which people process multimedia messages and by implementing these principles of multimedia learning into the design of digital technologies at museums,. Th e data also suggest that museums should especially support visitors in using technology with which they are already familiar and embed it in the museum experience.

Subject-Object Engagement Study in Exhibition Spaces: A Comparison Between Taman Mini Indonesia Indah’s Pavilion and Indonesia Kaya Gallery

“…Technology plays an important role in visitor's general meaning-making process about objects and other information they encounter, and that visitors use digital technologies as a vehicle for satisfying one or more personal needs (Myrczik, 2014). Another research regarding the use of technology to create engagement between subject and objects is done in a history museum where an experiment is conducted to compare three visiting modes; visiting with computer interactive guidebook, visiting with a worksheet, and visiting without any supplementary tools.…”