The MiniMuseums Companion: Designing for Interaction, Emotion and Immersive Aesthetic Experience

This study uses Research through Design (RtD) and design probe techniques to develop an augmented reality (AR) exhibit companion for MiniMuseums, a distributed public art concept that debuted in San Francisco and Oakland, California during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the course of four months, this project culminated in developing an immersive experiential companion to the MiniMuseums exhibits using responses from a series of dialogic, time-released design probes in-situ. Qualitative interviews were conducted with three contributing MiniMuseums artists, and eight design probe participants completed a series of prescriptive and open-ended creative probe activities. Thematic analysis was carried out to identify the emotional, perceptive, and immersive qualities of interacting with art, the vehicle necessary to drive those interactions, and the minimum level of interaction required for users to consider art interactive. This studies includes the resulting design artifacts of the dialogic time-released probe series as well as findings from the research-as-documentation design process, research methods, and overall implications of the work towards multisensory interaction design.