Attraction by Interaction: Wiki Webs As A Way To Increase The Attractiveness Of Museums' Web Sites

Peter Hoffmann, Institute for Multimedia and Interactive Systems, Germany
Michael Herczeg, University of Luebeck, Germany

Session: User Content: Tools

Classical Internet Web sites are passive: visitors can only read the information presented. There are several possibilities to integrate interaction in Web sites with the goal of making visitors feel more comfortable and letting them spend a longer time on the Web site. Typical possibilities like trivia quizzes, interactive simulation applets and more lack any creative potential. Some forms of modern communication technology offer a wider range of interaction, but remain relatively unknown and thus unused. Such interaction is often more social. One example is Wiki Webs, which are tools for collaborative work: the user is part of a community and can add content to a Web site or edit existing content. For museums, both virtual and real, Wiki Web technology can be interesting because visitors are able to change the information content of the exhibition in several ways, and thus leave their own individual traces in the exhibition. The Wikiseum of Bad Movies, which is introduced in this paper, is a virtual exhibition which uses the interactive potential of Wiki Webs. It supports both a static exhibition, where the visitor is really just visitor, and an interactive exhibition, where the visitor can be active and interactively create the exhibition.