Days Out

Over the past couple of weeks I have had two family days out that I believe will be of great use to me in my project.

I had a nice trip to three of Hulls local museums; I visited the Hull and East Riding museum, the Streetlife Museum and Wilberforce House. None of these museums had any exhibits or information that is directly of use within my project but it was interesting to look at the different ways in which each museum and sometimes each exhibit tried to communicate their information to their public audience. I was particularly interested by the interactive exhibits like the touch screens used at Wilberforce House as they fit a theme that I seem to have adopted within my project research and development

” Views of the past in a modern way”

The use of technology in its many forms as a tool to tell a story of the past is fascinating to me as people usually seem to think of new technology as a step into an uncertain but amazing future but technology can also help us to look backwards and show not only where we’re going to but where we’re coming from.

The actual exhibits were not relevant to the same subject or time period but I still could look at the way in which the design of the interfaces matched the topics they were displaying or not as it appeared in some cases. Overall my trip to the museums of Hull did not provide me with anything that I did not already know but it was a useful experience all the same. Sometime in the future I hope to visit the recently opened Hull History Centre as I hope to find useful information for my project.

I also had an interesting day with my family in London, I attempted to borrow an Iphone in the hope of being able to test the Street Museum application, unfortunately it seems that my Iphone using friends cannot bare to be separated from their devices for a day and thus not unexpectedly I could not procure an Iphone and I was unable to see the app working.

My technological woes did not end there though, I attempted to use the only augmented reality app currently available for my own handset, Nokia’s Point and Find application. I have attempted use this app in Hull but I have not been able to find any local info so I hoped London would be a more fruitful testing ground, the app seemed unable to configure the GPS coordinates so it would not work, I tried my devices GPS within another app and it seemed to be working fine so it seems I was destined to failure with my app testing that day.

The day was not entirely useless though as I was surprised at how many older buildings still stand tall in London considering that as a city it was bombed more than Hull, I have been to London before but never compared the loss of architectural heritage to that of my own city. This confirmed to me the loss my home city had suffered and the need for my application.