Above: Interior of the National Portrait Gallery.

Content and context

The NPG has existing digital media that encourages the public to visit the gallery. This includes their user-friendly website and Portrait Stories app, which is specifically designed for accessibility.

The NPG describes its collection as a

“lively compendium documenting […] the various ways – formal or informal, public or private, doting or irreverent – in which the genre has been explored in Australia.” (NPG, 2017)

This design proposal seeks to better engage and recall visitors to the NPG, by encouraging them to ‘play’ and physically explore the portraiture genre.

This can be achieved through interactive digital signage, which introduces each gallery. This signage provides visitors with an immersive, personalised experience through the use of self-portrait. Visitors are encouraged to browse the collections, and interact with the portraits by recreating them. This enables visitors to explore the gallery and become part of the collection in a playful, informal way.

This proposal will benefit the NPG through its appeal to a wide range of age groups. The system is child-friendly, which encourages parents, families and school groups to visit the gallery more frequently. Visitors can upload their self-portraits to social media. This creates awareness of the gallery, and encourages people to visit and take a self-portrait of their own.

Above: Interior and exterior of the National Portrait Gallery.

Design proposal

This design proposal is for a digital signage system that introduces each gallery to visitors in a fun, novel way.

The signage takes the form of large touch screens, positioned at the entrance of each gallery. These screens display the gallery’s name, number, theme and a brief introduction. When interacting with these screens, visitors are able to browse the gallery’s collection and pick a portrait to recreate. While browsing, visitors are provided with further information about the artworks, including the artist, subject, materials and context. This helps to engage the visitor in the content as well as the activity.

Once they have selected a portrait, they mimic the pose, and their self-portrait is taken using a countdown and built-in camera. After taking their self-portrait, the visitors can choose to retake the photo, send the portrait to their phone, or upload the photo to their social media accounts. The photo is also added to a digital ‘visitors gallery,’ where they can see other people’s recreated portraits.

Existing design solutions

There are a number of institutions that have implemented similar strategies to engage visitors.

'Pointillize Yourself'

‘Pointillize Yourself’ is an iPad application that was developed for the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s Neo-Impressionist Portrait exhibition (MW2015, 2015). This app provided visitors with a playful, participatory experience where they took their photograph and applied filters that replicated the Neo-Impressionist style. While this example is a native app, it employs a number of features that could be adapted to digital signage.

These features include:

• Control over portrait aesthetics. This app gave visitors the ability to apply a pointillist filter, select their desired dot size, adjust colour settings and add a digital signature (Sternbergh, Fantoni & Djen, 2015). By allowing the visitor control over the appearance of the portrait’s aesthetics, the visitor is more involved and the process is personalised. These filters also ensure the portrait is representative of the Neo-Impressionist style, which was the focus of the exhibition.
• Social sharing. Visitors were able to directly share their self-portrait from the app, through email or Facebook.
• Portraits projected outside the exhibition. Visitors could see their completed self-portrait projected onto a wall. This served to further immerse the visitor in the exhibition, and allowed them to take a ‘selfie’ with their self-portrait.

Approximately 9,000 self-portraits were shared during the exhibition, and 61% of visitors used the app (Sternbergh, Fantoni & Djen, 2015). These high participation rates indicate that the app was highly successful. Visitors of all ages and social backgrounds used the app, which highlights its relevancy to the exhibition (Sternbergh, Fantoni & Djen, 2015).

'How Do Our Bodies Inspire Art?'

This art installation at the Cleveland Museum of Art used touch screens and the concept of games to encourage engagement with the collections (Alexander, Barton & Goeser, 2013). This example most closely resembles the NPG proposal, though its features are far more complex.

These features include:

• Motion sensors to detect movement. ‘Strike a Pose’ asked visitors to imitate the pose of a sculpture. Kinect sensors were used to detect how accurately the visitor’s pose matched the sculpture (Alexander, Barton & Goeser, 2013). A percentage is assigned to the visitor based on their accuracy.
• Facial recognition software. Similarly, ‘Make a Face’ asked visitors to make a facial expression, which were recorded by a webcam. This was then matched to the closest portrait in the collection, using facial recognition software. This interface was split in half, enabling visitors to see their expression on one side, and the portrait on the other.
• Social sharing. Visitors were able to directly share their results from these games through email, Facebook or Twitter.

These features show how institutions can adopt the concept of play. By creating games that focus on pieces from the collections, visitors have greater interest in the galleries, especially when they recognise the artworks on display. These games also encourage visitors to create personal connections with the artworks, based on their memorable, interactive experience.

'Enlighten Canberra'

At Enlighten Canberra in 2017, the National Portrait Gallery was part of the architectural projections (Enlighten Canberra, 2017). The NPG’s projection was based on the concept of a photo-booth. Visitors lined up to take their photo. Their photo then appeared in a ‘reel’ alongside photos of other participators, projected onto the building. This concept was received with enthusiasm, and the waiting lines were extensive due to the number of eager participants. This example shows that there is an interested audience for the NPG proposal. Based on this event, it can be expected that a similarly enthusiastic reaction may result amongst visitors to the gallery.

Insights from existing design solutions

These existing design solutions provide insight into how the design proposal can be further improved, as outlined below.

• Aesthetic filters for the self-portraits should be included to further personalise the user’s experience, and keep the user engaged for a longer period of time. By including filters that reflect the techniques and styles of the portraits, users are able to recreate them more accurately.
• It is important that users can share their self-portraits directly from the touch screen to their social media accounts.
• Users should be rewarded for completing the activity. This can be achieved through posting the photo to social media or having the photo appear in a public setting alongside other attempts. This allows users to continue engaging with the signage, by looking at other people’s creations.
• Being able to view the selected portrait and camera interface at the same time, on a split screen, is imperative to engaging the user with the portraits, and ensuring they have the best possible experience.

Feasibility

This interactive experience can be built using HTML5 and CSS for the layout and design; JavaScript and jQuery to display and interact with dynamic content (such as the gallery portraits); and Media Capture APIs to access the camera function (Bidelman, 2012).

Product backlog

This proposal is seeded by the following user stories, also accessible on Trello.

As a visitor:

• I want to know what each gallery is about before I enter it.
• that is vision-impaired, I need to see signs that have large, legible text.
• I want to be engaged by signs that look appealing.
• I want to be excited about the portraits before I enter the gallery.

As a user:

• I want to be able to browse the portraits and select one to recreate.
• I want to have access to more information about each of the portraits.
• I want to be able to go back and skip screens.
• I want to be able to apply filters to my self-portrait.
• I want to upload my self-portrait to social media.
• I want to send my self-portrait to my phone.
• I want to have the option to retake the photo.
• I want to see the self-portraits created by other visitors.
• I want to take a selfie with my self-portrait.
• I want to compare my self-portrait with the original portrait.

Design direction

The design direction is similar to the existing Portrait Stories app. This is to maintain consistency across the NPG’s branding. The following images show the proposed design, which features simple controls, playful icons and an inviting interface.

Left to right: Welcome screen, pick a portrait, camera screen, add filters, share and send the self-portrait.

Above: Proposed positioning of the digital signage outside the gallery entrances.