Beyond merely information provisioning: a museum handheld guide based on social activities and playful learning

During a museum visit, social interaction can improve intellectual, social, personal and cultural development. With the advances in technology, the use of personal mobile handheld devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) that replace the traditional paper guidebooks is becoming a common sight at various heritage sites all over the world. This technology often leads to problems such as isolating the visitor from his companions and distracting the visitor away from his surroundings. We believe careful design of mobile applications and taking advantage of low cost networking infrastructure can avoid isolating the visitor from his surroundings and encourage interaction with both his surroundings and his companions. In this paper we describe our approach to create a mobile handheld guide that supports the learning process by exploiting social interaction between visitors and subtle matching the content and concepts shown on the handheld guide with what can be found in the museum.