Mapping History: Orienting Museum Visitors across Time and Space

Abstract

At historic open-air museums, many of the “objects” under investigation are buildings and landscapes that could tell multiple, overlapping narratives: i.e., they were built/manipulated over the course of years by different peoples and groups who used them for varying purposes. In this article, we address this challenge by proposing the use of interactive maps to orient visitors in time, space, and both time and space. We conducted a series of collaborative-design workshops to elicit recommendations. From the analysis of the transcripts, we identified four design elements and two functionalities that could be used for these purposes. We then conducted a study at an open-air museum to compare the extent to which these design elements and functionalities (and a prototype that integrates them) allow visitors to orient themselves in time and space, and to notice change over time.