Pathways through information landscapes: alternative design criteria for digital art collections

In this paper, we apply a concept driven interaction design approach to introduce a design theory for the presentation and navigation of digital art collections. This involves the realization of the design as a working artifact. Our approach aligns with efforts by art galleries and museums that embrace digital media. Our research raises the question of how gesture-based interfaces and novel interaction approaches can be used to provide non-linear information seeking experiences as compared to more conventional affordances for online museum collections, such as search and faceted browsing, or more traditional formats, such as print media and catalogues. We employ a unique interaction design based on the notion that, within museum collections, showing the context and relationships that surround individual objects creates a valuable web of meaning. It exploits the idea that the digital medium affords the ability to express the multiplicity of these relationships.