Exploring Visitor Stories Using a Radio Interface

In this paper, we describe an interactive environment designed and created within a museum context. “Re-Tracing the Past: Exploring objects, stories and mysteries” allowed visitors to explore and investigate artefacts housed within the museums permanent collection. One interactive installation within ‘ReTracing the Past’, the ‘Radio’, allows for the exploration of previously recorded visitor stories through an interface metaphor based on a 1940’s style radio – the ‘Radio’. This interface proved to be an ideal window into a continually growing repository of visitor opinions. This paper will briefly introduce the larger environment and particular museum context. We shall then focus on the Radio, looking at some of the earlier design ideas, the physical modifications, its technical implementation, and user responses to such a familiar object.