Comments on: Multi-touch, Multi-user Table Prototype

By: Museum Exhibit and Design News | Ideum blog » Blog Archive » RSS Mixer Public Alpha Ends

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:12:54 +0000

[...] Multi-touch, Multi-user Table Prototype [...]

By: Jim Spadaccini

Jim Spadaccini — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:59:44 +0000

Tom,
Thanks for link and I’ve subscribed to your blog. In answer to your question most our experience is with museums, so we’re not thinking much about formal education at the moment. Our main multi-touch developer, Paul Lacey comes from the formal education world, so who knows, it might be something we look at in the future.

By: Tom Barrett

Tom Barrett — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:16:48 +0000

Hi Jim - interesting to see more an more of these sorts of developments. I work in a primary school in England and I think that their is a great future for such displays in classrooms and as a tool to support and enhance learning.

We have been lucky enough to be directly involved with one such project ourselves here is a blog post I wrote about it http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/2008/09/27/the-philips-entertaible-in-our-school/

I would be interested to see what you make of it all or if you have considered your own device to have a place in schools?

By: Lynn Marentette

Lynn Marentette — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 01:34:05 +0000

It is good to see interactive tables finding homes in museums! Keep up the great work.

I work with students who have a variety of disabilities, so I’m interested in accessibility and usability factors related to interactive tables and displays.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:14:41 +0000

Bryan, Lynda,
Thanks for sharing these interesting examples. The design challenges this technology presents is truly fascinating. Bryan as to your point about making accessible to visitors in chairs, one important point I forgot to mention. Our table is 31″ tall making it much accessible, this was a real challenge in developing the first prototype.

By: Lynda Kelly

Lynda Kelly — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:19:04 +0000

Hi Jim, this is really interesting and hope you get something happening for M&W2009. We developed a large touch table in our new Surviving Australia exhibition. While it is not so much about visitors creating their own content, the idea behind it was to enable visitors to follow their own interests in learning about “dangerous” Australian animals - you can see the video here (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pYuy4MfKv0k).

I’m also working on a user needs analysis for a project called the Atlas of Living Australia, a website that will eventually provide a one-stop shop for information and data about Australia’s flora and fauna. Mapping and mash-ups are a key need identified in our study and I think we’ll have a lot to learn from your work so looking forward to hearing more.

By: bryan kennedy

bryan kennedy — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:38:05 +0000

It is really exciting to see some pictures of this device that I’ve heard you talk about. I am totally interested to check out the Snowflake tool as well. Thanks for talking about that level of detail here.

The session at MATW would be great. Several of us here at the Science Museum of Minnesota are working on a similar project in partnership with the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois in Chicago.(video here) It will be useful to share ideas about how this new technology can be used in our museum space. I am specifically interested in figuring out how we make this kind of experience accessible to our visitors in chairs.

I hope you keep posting about your work with this product here.