COIN-O-RAMA: Designing an Interactive Exhibit for Exploring and Engaging with Coin Exhibitions

Abstract

This paper presents COIN-O-RAMA, an interactive exhibit designed for exploring and further engaging with coins in physical exhibitions. The key motivation was to create an appealing and user friendly system, augmenting and complementing the overall experience of visiting the exhibition, also offering the means for creating a personalized digital souvenir (a coin with the user's head engraved on it), working as a post-visit link to the exhibition and to related information, as well as an artifact to share with friends and the social media. In this paper the requirements and preferences upon which the creation of COIN-O-RAMA was based are presented, followed by an account of the conceptual and interaction / user interface design of the system. Subsequently, a technical description of the process followed to achieve the engraving effect used for creating the personalized digital coin is offered. Then, the results of an expert evaluation of a fully working prototype of the system are reported, comprising issues raised by the evaluators and the corresponding re-design of the system. The paper wraps up with some conclusions and pointers to future work.