Electronic Guidebooks and Visitor Attention
Allison Woodruff , Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, USA
Paul Aoki , Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, USA
Amy Hurst , Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, USA
Margaret Szymanski , Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, USA

Session: Design & Evaluation: User Interaction

We describe an electronic guidebook prototype and report on a study of its use in a historic house. Supported by mechanisms in the guidebook, visitors constructed experiences that had a high degree of interaction with three entities: the guidebook, their companions, and the house and its contents. In this paper, we report a qualitative analysis of how different properties of the guidebook helped or hindered visitors' attempts to balance the competing demands of these attentional entities. Based on the visitors' comments and behavior, we distill a set of design principles.

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