Shaping experiences in the Hunt Museum: a design case study

Re-Tracing the Past: exploring objects, stories, mysteries, was an exhibition held at the Hunt Museum, in Limerick, Ireland from 9th - 19th June 2003. We attempted to create an exhibition that would be an engaging experience for visitors, that would open avenues for exploration, allow for the collec- tion of visitor opinions, and that would add to the understand- ing of material already in the Museum, rather than focus on "gee-whiz" technology. Thus our augmented environment completely hid the technology from view. A key objective was to be faithful to the ethos of the Museum, and to produce an exhibition that would stand up to scrutiny by Museum profes- sionals. This design study paper gives a flavour of the exhibi- tion by taking the reader on a tour of the whole design and development cycle - through site pictures, drawings, scenar- ios, pictures of the exhibition spaces, the interactive compo- nents, and visitor comments.