“Pages of the Past” is a project that was made to enhance visitors experience of Cork City Gaol through an innovative application of new digital media. It was important to create something that would fit into the 19th century surroundings of the Gaol. The Gaol museum strives to transport visitors back in time, with objects from the era all over the building and no obviously visible technology.

 

“Pages of the Past” is an interactive book where visitors of the Gaol can go through and interact with the pages at leisure. With hidden technologies, visitors can unlock digital content such as the voices of inmates telling them different things about life in prison. The book uses page turns and movable book interactions (eg pop ups and pull tabs) to trigger the content.

 

 

My role involved researching what content to present with “Pages of the Past”. I found copies of the old prison registers from the Gaol online and thought an interactive prison register would be really interesting for visitors. When I researched more into book styles of the 19th century I found that movable books (eg. pop-ups, pull tabs) were popular then. I thought that adding movable book interactions to unlock digital content would be a novel  way to enhance the experience of visitors. I also wrote the script for the book, making sure it was conversational in tone and full of visual imagery. I used tried and tested methods to evaluate “Pages of the Past” at different stages of its production. A usability test showed that some of my proposed book interactions weren’t as simple to understand as I thought, so were improved upon. Our final evaluation session showed that “Pages of the Past has great promise, which I am really happy about.

 

You can see more information on the process of creating the project at http://fypcorkcitygaol.wordpress.com/