Multiuser museum interactives for shared cultural experiences: an agent-based approach

Multiuser museum interactives are computer systems installed in museums or galleries which allow several visitors to interact together with digital representations of artefacts and information from the museum’s collection. WeCurate is such a system, providing a multiuser curation workflow where the aim is for the users to synchronously view and discuss a selection of images, finally choosing a subset of these images that the group would like to add to their group collection. The system presents two main problems: workflow control and group decision making. An Electronic Institution (EI) is used to model the workflow into scenes, where users engage in specific activities in specific scenes. A multiagent system is used to support group decision making, representing the actions of the users within the EI, where the agents advocate and support the desires of their users e.g. aggregating opinions, proposing interactions and resolutions between disagreeing group members and choosing images for discussion.