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 collection of visitor opinions,and that would add to the understanding 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 professionals. This design study paper gives a flavour of the exhibition by taking the reader on a tour of the whole design and development cycle-through site pictures, drawings, scenarios, pictures of the exhibition spaces, the interactive components, and visitor comments.