Electronic Guidebooks and Visitor Attention

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.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: ICHIM
• Authors: Allison Woodruff, Paul M. Aoki, Amy Hurst, Margaret H. Szymanski
• Keywords: Electronic Guidebook Prototype, Guidebook, ICHIM 2001, Visitors Constructed Experiences