ARchive

Abstract

Museums are places where the objects displayed are on a pedestal, often quite literally. These objects are found to be of such importance to be selected and displayed for thousands of people, tourists or purists, to see.
This experience of visiting an institution, viewing an almost sacred object you cannot touch, and reading the supplementary text, only goes so far. It is a long shot for trying to communicate the artefacts’ deep backstories, to the visitors.
Could it be possible for this to still be achieved? By appreciating the institute’s wants, respecting the artefact, but not sacrificing depth and interaction with the artefacts. What if a novel technology, Augmented Reality, was implemented, could that create that change?
This train of thought formed the conception of this project.


This graduation project explored the use of Augmented Reality in relatino to Design Heritage artefacts. Ultimately for visitors to be inspired and learned from their stories.
This project was in collaboration with the Henri Baudet Institute, of the Industrial Design Engineering(IDE) faculty. The institute has a collection of classic product design objects for students to learn about and be inspired by.

For this project the context was set to the IDE faculty, and its students from all levels as the target group.

An important other element for this project was the aim to find and strike a balance between real-world interactions and digital ones.

Multiple research methods to get a better understanding of learning and AR were used. Also User studies to uncover the users' wants, needs and dreams.

A iterative process of ideation, prototyping and small scale user tests were performed to effectively improve the concepts and prototypes.

The final outcome is ARchive:
ARchive is an interactive museum experience that brings artefacts to life in an engaging and educational manner. Through the power AR technology and visitors’ smart devices, the now normally hidden stories of these objects can be unlocked. The concept offers a multisensory experience where visitors can interact with, and learn about the artefacts in a casual way, all from devices familiar to them.