Experiments in emerging technologies - An overview of the work of the Science Museum Group's Digital Lab for the Museum Next 2017 conference in Rotterdam.

1. VR at ScM - going back to the mid 90’s
Silicon Graphics
SMG Digital Lab
Dave Patten

2. The Digital Lab

4. sciencemuseum

6. The Digital Lab explores how museums can fulfil
their missions in the digital age.
It will let us imagine and explore the digital museum of the future
by exploring ways in which the innovative use of digital
technologies can transform audience experiences of the museum
and it’s collection

7. The Digital Lab’s initiatives will:
• explore and test emerging technologies and establish their suitability for longer term initiatives;
• be agile and rapidly respond to new technologies and opportunities;
• deliver prototypes products that can be trailed with audiences;
• lab projects will have a short lifetime, unencumbered by the needs of long-term sustainability;
• engage audiences, providing them new experiences;
• share findings and insights widely both within the museum and with the culture/heritage sector;
• form partnerships with technologists, companies, researchers and others who share our
interests;

8. Areas of interest
• Digital storytelling
• How might digital media allow us to more effectively foreground objects in stories?
• How might we use digital to layer information for different audiences, Is it possible to dynamically
reorder content driven by user interest?
• VR & AR
• How might VR & AR enable audiences to explore collection objects and the stories around them in
new, more immersive ways?
• Location aware services
• How might location-aware mobile technologies enable audiences to experience collection objects in
the places where those objects have significance? - i.e. outside the museum
• How might we use WiFi triangulation and access points to deliver new experiences to visitors such
as layering of content and context?
• Gaming
• What new kinds of games might engage new audiences with the museums and their collection?
• What kind of games might be developed that enveloped the whole museum experience?

9. The first three Digital Lab projects were for
Mathematics : the Winton Gallery and were funded
by Samsung.
• Enhanced digitisation of a small number objects
• Hackathons creative challenges
• VR experience experimental interpretation

11. Enhanced digitisation
• Explore different kinds of 3D capture
• Understand the impact on workflow

24. Hackathons

25. Hackathon #1

26. Games

27. Chatbots

28. The Egg

29. Outputs

30. Hackathon #2
?

31. VR - Handley Page HP39

40. • A very low number of people have experienced VR
• Over 99% of people finish the experience
• ~5 minutes is slightly too long for an in-gallery museum experience*
• VR can effectively deliver content messages
• It drives deeper exploration of the real object
* not necessarily for he VR users but for other members of their group waiting for them
VR initial findings
We take the VR experience into the gallery for an hour or two every week
and also to our Lates events on the last Wednesday of every month. So
far we have tested with over 600 visitors.

41. VR what next

44. THANK YOU
__
lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk
@davepatten
@sciencemuseum