Creating Digital Engagement with The Special Collections of the Museum of Design and Applied Art

Cox, Anna; Sweeney, Matthew; Layam, Kiana-Karla; Freitas, Madelaine

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Creating Digital Engagement with The Special Collections of the Museum of Design and Applied Art

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The Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP) Worcester Polytechnic Institute provides a unique experience where we get to work on a team to complete a social science project with real world impact. For our IQP project we worked with Hönnunarsafn Íslands, the Icelandic Museum of Design and Applied Arts. Overall, the museum is rather small and has a limited staff, which makes planning new exhibits and managing the collections quite difficult. The museum was looking for a way to digitally represent more items from their collection in storage for their upcoming exhibit about home. Having better access to the storage through technology would allow the museum to optimize their space, minimize the amount of manual labor for the staff, and it would allow patrons to explore the full scope of Icelandic design the museum has to offer. While working with the museum, we conducted research concerning the integration of technology in the museum and the best ways to engage an audience with their collections. Our methods to conduct our research and to gather data were mainly field observations and interviews. Our observations showed that all of the museums visited had some sort of digital component. Each component served a purpose, either for engaging the audience or to better utilize the available space. This data helped guide our decisions regarding the recommendations for our deliverables. The interviews provided information on how other museum experts have dealt with the same issues that our museum was facing, more details on the specific pieces that were going to be displayed, and overall personal opinions based on experience. This data provided further context that could be used for our deliverable, a few recommendations for the museum to expand their collection using technology. We provided the museum with prototypes for two holographic displays, as well as near field communication tags (NFC tags). We also recommended the utilization of VR equipment and provided contacts for achieving this.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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