PanelExperience, Traverse, Inhabit

Bringing a sense of place to digital navigation

November 6, 2015 | MCN | Minneapolis

For my part in this panel, “Experience, Traverse, Inhabit: Bringing a Sense of Place to Digital Navigation”, I focused on the idea of “objectness” in digital books. Along with discoverability and longevity, objectness (or our understanding the dimensions and boundaries of a digital book) has been one of the key challenges in the field.

My premise in the talk is that when we’re reading books, our brains read them as places we inhabit. Our sense of a place is informed by our understanding of its objectness, meaning its scope, our position within that scope, and its position relative to other objects/places.

Session Description

What does it mean to navigate a digital space? Museums have long considered how we can guide people through our physical spaces. Since the first museum websites of the late 1990s, digital platforms have given us a set of new “spaces” for our visitors to explore. How do we define these digital spaces and open them to our visitors? What will they do while they are there? What will their experiences feel like? Who will they encounter? Greg Albers will consider the visual and physical terrain we cover when we read, the objects (words) we encounter there, the markers we use in mapping our way through long texts, and how journeys like these might be supported when we design texts for digital reading. Emily Lytle-Painter will share insights about observing exploratory and non-didactic visitor experiences in physical museums, and examine how museums might create atmospheric online spaces and invite visitors to spend time beyond simply seeking information. Rob Stenzinger will share projects from the retail sphere and discuss how discovering the goals and intent of a guest can inform the feedback we offer in a digital space, which in turn provides a sense of place and accomplishment.

Other Speakers/Participants

  • Emily Lytle-Painter, Senior Digital Content Manager, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
  • Rob Stenzinger, UX Designer, Coder, and Facilitator, Enterprise Growth Initiatives Team, Target

thanks for visiting!