BentoMuseum

3D and Layered Interactive Museum Map for Blind Visitors

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3D Data

We present a 3D, layered, and interactive map, BentoMuseum, that allows blind visitors to learn the external structure, internal attractions and the route,
to develop a mental map of a museum that contains a vast amount of information.

A 3D rendering of the designed model. It breaks into five parts, four floors and a roof, in an exploded view.

Exploded view of the 3D models

The fully stacked 3D print, which stacked the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th floors, and the roof. The building has a boat shape, with the “bow” on the left side.

Fully stacked

A user is touching the 5F floor of the model that is laid on top of the 1st and 3rd floors.

Opened

The 3rd floor of the final model,which is overlaid on top of an iPad and is taken with a perspective view. Intersections and paths are created in the middle of two rows of exhibits. Control buttons are clipped on around the edge of the iPad. Bottom-left corner: Navigation/Exploration mode-change button, Voice/Action Stop button; Bottom-right corner: Voiceover speed-up/speed-down controls.

One floor on a touch screen

Exploration mode

Navigation mode

Abstract

Obtaining information before a visit is one of the priority needs and challenges for blind museum visitors. We propose BentoMuseum, a layered, stackable, and three-dimensional museum map that makes complex structural information accessible by allowing explorations on a floor and between floors. Touchpoints are embedded to provide audio-tactile interactions that allow a user to learn the museum’s exhibits and navigation when one floor is placed on a touch screen. Using a tour design task, we invited 12 first-time blind visitors to explore the museum building, chose exhibits that attracted them, and built a mental map with exhibit names and directions. The results show that the system is useful in obtaining information that links geometric shapes, contents, and locations to then build a rough mental map. The connected floors and spatial structures motivated users to explore. Moreover, having a rough mental map enhanced orientation and confidence when traveling through the museum.

Video

Publication

Xiyue Wang, Seita Kayukawa, Hironobu Takagi, and Chieko Asakawa. 2022. BentoMuseum: 3D and Layered Interactive Museum Map for Blind Visitors. In The 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’22), October 23–26, 2022, Athens, Greece. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 14 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3517428.3544811

Aknowledgement

We thank all of the participants who took part in our user study. We also thank Sakiko Tanaka, Bunsuke Kawasaki, and Kotaro Osawa, the Science Communicators at Miraikan – The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, for their contributions to the system design and field study.

Contact

If you have any question about the project, or if you hope to have a hand-on experience of our system at Miraikan, please contact Xiyue Wang (wang.xiyue[at]lab.miraikan.jst.go.jp). We are happy to discuss the project with you.