Name of your team

• Night Owls

Introductions of your team members. Photos would be nice!

• Ayesha Tahseen: I am currently doing my Masters in HTI. I want to become a Product analyst or manager. Nowadays, I am interested in knowing more about how to make design more accessible.

• Carlos Tiu

  

  • I’m currently finishing up my first year in my Master’s in HTI. I want to become a design researcher or consultant, and want to learn how to use behavioral sciences to create better products, services, and systems for all kinds of people.

• Chen-Yu Cheng: I’m a first-year student of the HTI master's degree. I want to participate in products that guide people to adapt to technical services more easily, building tools that enable users to achieve their goals with approachable technology in daily life.

• Parnian Ghaderiazad: I’m a first-year master’s student in HTI. I'm interested in conducting user research, crafting hi-fi wireframes, facilitating workshops, and teaching. While I haven't settled on a single job title yet, I think "product design" mostly encapsulates the essence of what I'm passionate about.

• Talia Qureshi: I'm currently studying for a Master's degree in HTI. My main interests lie in design and sustainability, particularly how we can create user-friendly and innovative solutions that enhance human experiences while maintaining sustainability.

Topic of your team assignment (if you know it)

• Vapriikki Museum: Museum Exhibit of The Future

State your team goals and explain why you have selected them. How are you going to evaluate your progress towards your goals?

• Our goals are to:
  • Have a project that we can use in our portfolios and CVs
  • Practice and learn new skills in the field of service/experience design
• To accomplish this and evaluate progress, we will identify relevant skills and techniques we want to use after the kick-off meeting, and assign responsibilities to each member based on what they would like to take the lead on.
• It’s very possible that the kind of growth and progress that we would experience would be non-linear or somewhat invisible - it’s quite possible that we would only realize to what degree we learned something after the project has made significant progress and we reflect on what we now know how to do because of the time and effort we put in. Nevertheless, we could check in with one another at various stages of the project and ask one another if we are satisfied with our work and if there are more things we could do or want to do to further add to the work.

Teamwork division

1. How did you agree to share responsibilities and roles?
   • Responsibilities and roles have not yet been fully assigned - first, we need to have the kick-off session and look at what particular aspects of the project appeal to us and what we want to do. From there, we expect that each of us will ‘take the lead’ on different stages or aspects of the project, and we encouraged each other to show initiative and volunteer for working on any section of the project that they are interested in.
2. Who is the project manager and what are her/his tasks?
   • Parnian is the project manager and her job is to settle indecision and delays that the group may experience with deciding what they want to do or if we’re unsure whether to move forward to another stage of the project or whether we still have enough time to debate over what we want to do next. We identified that having a ‘leader’ at least to make final calls and decide when we need to cut our losses and move on will help us avoid spending too much time on the project (recognizing that we have other classes and priorities that we need to balance with this project).
3. How are you going to communicate, what tools you will use?
   • We have a Telegram chat that we use to regularly communicate with one another
4. How are you going to make team decisions and solve conflicts?
   • Generally, we will arrive at our decisions collaboratively, but if there are conflicts we need to settle, we will approach them directly and kindly, with a focus on trying to get the team to work together instead of trying to place blame on one another.

Team assignment topic desk research (you can continue this task during the first weeks)

• Read about desk research:
  • https://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/desk-research-the-what-why-and-how.html
  • https://invotech.co/blog/what-is-desk-research-and-how-to-do-it/
• Provide definitions and expand any relevant concepts/terms in your topic: what do these concepts mean, what is included in them, and from what kind of perspectives can you approach your topic? Refer to scientific (e.g., search research articles from university library or Google Scholar) and other (web) sources where possible. Aim to expand your understanding of the topic and the relevant concepts, as this will support conducting the user research.
  • Desk research is another term for secondary research and is not focused on collecting data but rather on trying to collect and understand research that has already been conducted and trying to synthesize the information generated from that.
  • The form and type of the secondary research can vary depending on the purpose of the research and what questions are being asked. Large sets of market research data can be used to identify key user groups or demographics for a product, while assembling a literature review might be good for scoping a general industry and looking at what current trends, solutions, and gaps exist.
  • There were two terms we were asked to focus on during the kick-off meeting: interactivity and learning. Due to this, we began to do desk research looking at other museums and the existing work being done to make them improve in these aspects, as well as to better understand how those terms manifest in the specific context in museums.
    • For example, interactivity in museums looks at not only how many and which kinds of senses are being engaged, but also factors in the accessibility of these exhibits to be enjoyed and better customized to fit the desired experience of each individual who uses the exhibit.
    • As for learning, this has to deal with the kinds of information being presented - how it is delivered, whether visitors of various backgrounds are able to walk away having discovered something new, or having new questions to ask, or new insights and knowledge on something they didn’t know before.
• Explore what kind of solutions or concepts are already available for the topic that your team has. Briefly describe a few examples that you find relevant to your topic, together with the source (e.g. weblink or article reference).
  1. What factors affect the interactivity of museum websites?
  2. How effective are holograms, 3D spaces, and Mixed Reality (MR) setups in museums? How do users find them and how do they affect the museum experience?
  3. What assistive technologies exist to make museum experiences more accessible?
  4. Museums as relational, ‘human’ establishments that foster closer connections with their visitors
  5. General overview on Human-Computer interactions in museums
  6. Does virtual reality promote visitor enjoyment and learning?
  7. Is there a trade-off in the quality of learning with museums that have more digital and technological exhibits?
  8. Museums as performative sites and storytelling tools, especially in the context of culture and heritage
  9. How is ICT transforming the place of museums as information generators and disseminators?
  10. How is ICT transforming the role of museums as storytelling and educational tools?
  11. Museums should use digital technology to create not individual experiences but instead interpersonal ones

Short summary of each team member’s contribution/tasks and working hours for the team assignment (last week + total). These will be reported in each diary/blog post and summarized at the end of the project.