Exploring the Future of Museum Website Interactions

Welcome to the Experimental Museum Interfaces (EMI) platform, where we explore new ways to engage with museum collections. Our research focuses on designing innovative interfaces that make interactions with vast collections more valuable, enjoyable, and intuitive. By rethinking how users search, browse, and experience collections, we aim to push the boundaries of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in museum contexts.

EMI is a hub for collaborative research. It serves as both a resource for ongoing academic work and a test bed for experimental approaches. Here, you’ll find an evolving collection of experiments that explore different ways to interact with museum collections, driven by principles of generous interfaces, rich prospect browsers, and recommendation systems.

Collection Explorer

A visual browsing tool that allows users to interact with museum artefacts through rich, immersive interactions.

Explore Collection Explorer

Timeline Journey

Navigate collections through time, following the journey of artefacts across historical periods.

Explore Timeline Journey

Generous Browsing Interface

A prototype focused on exploring collections with minimal searching, designed to open up connections between objects in unexpected ways.

Explore Front-End Boilerplates

About EMI

Discover the vision behind EMI, the research team driving our projects, and our commitment to exploring new ways of engaging with museum collections. Learn how we aim to enhance the value, enjoyment, and accessibility of cultural heritage through innovative interface design.

Literature Review

Explore our summary of current research on generous interfaces and rich-prospect browsers, which highlights innovative approaches to browsing and interacting with digital cultural heritage collections. This overview serves as a gateway to deeper research insights and trends in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and cultural heritage interface design.

Latest Research

Generous Interfaces for Enhancing Museum Collection Browsing

This research explores how generous interfaces—designs that present a wealth of information up front without requiring users to initiate a search—can improve the user experience of browsing large museum collections. The study focuses on how such interfaces enable users to discover hidden or overlooked artefacts, facilitating serendipitous exploration. By comparing traditional search-driven interfaces with generous interfaces, the research will investigate how users interact differently and whether these interfaces lead to more meaningful and engaging experiences with collections.

The Impact of Generous Interfaces on User Engagement and Discovery

This research project aims to assess the effectiveness of generous interfaces in promoting user engagement and discovery in museum environments. By presenting users with rich, contextual overviews of collections, these interfaces offer multiple entry points to content, potentially enhancing the exploration process. The study will track user interaction patterns to determine whether generous interfaces help users uncover connections between artefacts, foster deeper engagement, and improve overall satisfaction when browsing museum collections. Insights will be used to inform the design of more intuitive and enriching interfaces for cultural institutions.

Jump Into Our Experimental Pages

Explore the evolving projects that make up EMI. These experimental pages represent our ongoing work to test new interaction methods and visualisation techniques for museum collections. Help shape the future of museum interactions by trying them out.

Experimental Museum Collection Exploration Website Interfaces

Dive into our experimental interfaces and tools designed to enrich museum experiences. These projects are in various stages of development and testing. Here are some of the current experiments you can explore.

Explore all experiments
Museum Collection Exploration

Ethics and Data Collection

At EMI, we take your privacy seriously. As part of our research, we collect and analyse user data, including interaction logs, analytics, and other forms of engagement metrics. This data helps us understand how users interact with our experimental interfaces and informs improvements to the design and functionality of our projects. All data collected is anonymised and stored securely. By participating in our experiments, you agree to the collection and use of this data for research purposes only. If you have any concerns about your privacy or the data being collected, please contact us directly at [contact email].