A Remote Multi-touch Experience to Support Collaboration between Remote Museum Visitors

This paper presents a collaborative experience designed to support learning in two remotely located museums sharing a common exhibition. A remote collaborative multi-touch experience offers an additional channel for museum visitors to explore the exhibition and increase the sense of connectedness and awareness between the two spaces. The experience flow includes stages offering opportunities for exploration, negotiation and cooperation. The paper describes the design and implementation of a system that allows simultaneous collaborative interaction and communication through two multi-touch surfaces augmented with videoconferencing. The system allows museum visitors to communicate with remote participants and with their peers. Finally, the paper discusses preliminary observations of end-users, and cultural organizations using the prototype. This work provides a use case for social interactive experiences that could draw museum visitors to further explore an exhibition and share their views and interpretation with others.