The document summarizes two workshops held with visually impaired participants to understand their needs and experiences in museums. In the workshops, participants used clay to create objects representing their ideas. These objects were analyzed and organized into groups to identify themes. Key findings included that guides should have strong presentation skills, be emotionally engaging, and aware of contextual factors. Accessibility of spaces and sensory elements like touch were also important. The clay pieces effectively facilitated discussion and insights into how visually impaired people experience and think about museums.

1. Use of Clay in the Dialogue with the Visually Impaired
Mariana Salgado Anna Salmi
msalgado[at]uiah.fi asalmi[at]uiah.fi
ABSTRACT
The topic of this paper is the tools used for designing accessible solutions in the context
of museum exhibitions. The paper focuses on the use of clay pieces during two
participatory design workshops held in Ateneum Museum in 2005. In addition we explain
how we use cards and affinity diagrams for analyzing the results. Based on the diagrams
produced we describe some features that are relevant for visually impaired people in
exhibitions.
The analysis of the clay pieces together with the participants’ oral interpretations is an
exploration into visually impaired people’s perceptions in the context of museums.
Emotions and space were the central topics that came up from this process of organizing
the workshops and making sense of the material we collected.
From this analysis we develop preliminary suggestions for planning future dialogues with
visually impaired people in this particular context.
Keywords: museum, participatory design, visually impaired, tactile and visual materials,
accessibility.
INTRODUCTION
As part of our process in the design of an interactive tool for the visually impaired
people’s community we posed some questions: how to engage with this community in
order to understand their needs in the context of a museum visit? How to clarify
questions about accessibility that deal with emotions?
In an attempt to look for these answers we organized two workshops during 2005 in
Ateneum Art Museum, The Finnish National Art Gallery, in Helsinki. The workshops
were based on Participatory Design methodologies. Researchers such as Hulcrantz and
Ibrahim have been using workshops of this type in order to evaluate future concepts
(Hulcrantz and Ibrahim 2002, 344-348). Our workshops were based on the model that
Taxén proposed for introducing participatory design in museums (Taxén 2004, 204-213).
Taxén describes methods for evaluating museum exhibits and for developing exhibition
concepts.
Two workshops were organized as part of the research activities of the project
Äänijälki.1This project consists of an interactive audio service for museums that allows
the exchange of comments within present, past visitors and museum staff. These
comments relate to the pieces in the exhibition and the navigation inside the museum.
1
Sound traces
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2. Äänijälki is an interactive audio service for museums that allows the exchange of
comments within present, past visitors and museum staff. These comments relate to the
pieces in the exhibition and the navigation inside the museum. “Äänijälki will be used for
sharing hints about the experience of going to and being in an exhibition. The goal is to
motivate visually impaired people to visit museums by providing a tool to get
information about museum spaces and exhibitions, with their ‘comments.’ ” (Salgado and
Kellokoski 2005, 10-17). It is now in a prototype stage.
Participants did not get to use the actual Äänijälki PDA application in the workshops.
They were informed about the concept and basic functionality. In addition the workshops
are an attempt to gather research material that can be useful for the project and to obtain
inspirational ideas for making museums accessible for the visually impaired people’s
community. The aim of the workshops is to enable us designers to create a thorough
understanding of the users’, their opinions, emotions and the challenges that they face
when visiting museums.
DESCRIPTION AND COMPARISON OF THE SITUATIONS
The workshops were planned in order to use the audio material produced in them as part
of the content of Äänijälki. We have video and audio documentation of both workshops.
We organized these two workshops in different ways. In the case of the first one we sent
a letter through a mailing list of visually impaired people advertising the workshop and
invited the people we were in touch with. In the first workshop we had six persons, only
one was a sighted person and she was the wife of one of the participants. Two of them
knew each other well before and one of them was an acquaintance that by chance met the
others in the workshop. Three were ladies that were around 70 years old and three were
around 40 years old.
In the case of the second workshop we invited the people through Arla Institute, a
vocational training and development centre, where we went to give an introduction about
our project: Äänijälki. Seven participants were visually impaired and the rest were
assistants or teachers. All of them participated in the workshop in equal terms. In this
group there were people of different ages, from 16 to 50 years old, and from different
backgrounds (For example: craft or masseurs students). In this workshop the total amount
of people present in the workshop was 17: 12 persons came from Arla Institute, two
persons were Ateneum Museum staff, one person was in charge of documenting and two
researchers conducted the workshop.
The program of the two workshops varied for some parts. In the second one we added a
tour in the museum and the whole workshop lasted one hour more than the first one.
CLAY PIECES
The aim of the first task of the workshops was to shed light on the factors that for the
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3. visually impaired make up a good experience in the museum. In the first workshop the
first hands-on task was to describe the features of an ideal future guide for museums. It
could be a person, a dog or a device. In the second, the task was to describe features of a
good exhibition. In both workshops clay was used as material for visualizing thoughts.
We chose clay because it utilizes visual medium, essential in design, for conveying ideas
and also because neither of us knows Braille. We also thought that the familiarity with
the material and the connection of it to childhood memories could facilitate the task.
Participants were asked to make a piece for each aspect they wanted to present.
The pieces were placed in the middle of the table one by one, in the order of being
finished. Participants modeled the clay and spoke about their ideas. After the participant
explained the clay piece we asked some questions related to the issues that rose from the
explanation. In many cases the question was how the person connects the piece with the
topic of future exhibitions.
After this activity, we asked the participants to start dividing the pieces into groups. The
task was, first, to classify the objects according to some commonality and then to give
each group a title. We participated in the classification task as facilitators. Collaboratively
with the participants we went through the pieces on the table one by one repeating the
title and asking suggestions for grouping them. Together with the participants we
formulated titles for each group. At the end of the task we confirmed that everyone
agreed with the titles given. This activity was based on the technique of making an
affinity diagram (Beyer, 1998). Most often such a diagram is put together on a wall using
e.g. Post-It Notes. The aim of building the diagram is to organize individual notes into a
hierarchical structure that reveals the common issues and themes in the subject that is
being studied (Beyer 1998).
The clay pieces are unique small sculptures, made for the purpose of communicating
participants’ ideas in the context of the workshop. They were a tool for stimulating
discussion and an aid for remembering what was discussed. The tangibility of the pieces
kept the meaning attached to them in a concrete shape.
ANALYSIS OF THE CLAY PIECES
1- Cards
“Pictorial montages show their seams, whereas the images produced by words fuse into
unified wholes” (Arnheim 1969, 253). Based on this statement, we decided that our
interpretation would focus on both the images and the oral descriptions that accompanied
them in the situation. To isolate these two sides of the same coin from each other would
have led to misinterpretations.
Figure 1. A card shows the title, a clay piece and the explanation.
In the process of analyzing the clay elements that the participants had made we created
cards. Each card had a picture of the particular clay piece (digitally color-corrected), a
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4. title given by the participant who made the piece and a fragment of the oral information
chosen and translated by the researchers. In this process of manipulating the cards some
of the interpretations took shape. These cards were boundary objects for the analysis.
This process of converting the clay pieces into cards was time consuming but it facilitated
meaningful discussion in our group and it helped to familiarize with the material. First
there is the fact that the pieces lost their tangibility aspect the moment we started working
with pictures and not any more with three-dimensional objects. Second the fact of
choosing a small piece of text that describes the piece is arguable. Since some times it
was not in this piece of description where meaningful hints appeared but in the discussion
that follows. Also, in some cases other participants were adding features or comments to
the piece and we chose to leave attached in the card only the comments made by the
author of the piece. We know that all these decisions influenced this analysis.
We gave pseudonyms for the workshop participants. Participants described themselves,
their intentions and their personalities through these pieces. For example, Hanna
associated the small cat with love (Picture 2). For her it was important that the work of
guiding was done with love, with an interest in the job and activity that was performed.
The piece also showed the ability of the person to make a small, precise cat out of clay.
Moreover, seeing the cat as a representation of love was a personal construction, not a
straightforward connection.
Figure 2.”Cat”.
The picture above depicts one possible connection between clay pieces and the oral
speech that accompanied them. There are a variety of relations that appear in these cards.
A cube, for example, has a perceptual and cultural liaison with the semantic meaning of
the cube. Everybody understands the cube as a simple form. Anniina put a cube on the
stage, adding that for her the cube means clarity. Anniina chose one characteristic of the
cube and associated it with the message she wanted to give. On the other hand, the card
with the “Cat” shows a personal connection between the metaphor chosen and the
explanation.
2-Diagrams
With the purpose of making an interpretation of the pieces, we did two diagrams that
describe the results for each workshop. First of all, after the workshop, we made an
affinity diagram using the cards with the aim of answering the question of what is a good
guide like. Based on our diagram (Figure 3) we found some characteristics that visually
impaired people found important: presentation skills, emotional or human features and
awareness of the context in which the guide is immersed.
Figure 3. Diagram 1.
The presentation skills are related to the fact that a guide “has to be clear”, manage the
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5. complexity and the shortages that an exhibition might have, and be able to explain one
piece in connection with others.
The guide has certain emotional characteristics as “love for the thing she is explaining”2,
interestedness, humor, personality, presence in the moment and subconsciously
connection with the theme. Another point was the notion that the guide has to be able to
make connections between knowledge and experience.
The issues undertook in the workshop concerning the situation of being in a museum
guided tour were the importance of the dialogue between the guide and the person, the
flexibility of the guide in talking about different topics related to the exhibition, “even
about technical description that someone could be interested in”. This flexibility is
connected to the idea that the guide should not have a fixed speech but could change it
according to the audience. Another point concerning the situation was that the
conformation of the group of listeners shapes the visit, and therefore naïve questioning is
either exhibited or inhibited.
There were other features that came out in the discussion, features specifically related to
the exhibition. These were represented in some of the clay shapes as well. A guide could
also address these problems although they were not direct characteristics of the guide
herself. For the participants the artist’s presence in the exhibition and the connection
between the artist and the piece were relevant issues. Moreover, the participants
highlighted the importance of having some touchable elements that could be explored in
an exhibition. Finally, they added that sometimes they have an unconscious assumption
that they are not able to move, so they avoid going and even trying. For representing this
idea Kalle, used the metaphor of the threshold.
In the case of the second workshop the first regrouping of cards produced a thematic
diagram. In this diagram we identified four groups. We also found pieces out of the
context of the workshop, or not addressing the question asked.
A) Accessibility issues were divided into two sub-groups: the kinesthetic accessibility
(relating to moving around, including the body actions in the exhibition) and the sensory
accessibility. In the sub-group that related to kinesthetic accessibility they proposed as
features of a good exhibition: absence of obstacles, possibility of movement even with
wheelchair, motivation for body movements as hanging, swinging and touching and
clarity of the exhibition’s route. In the sub-group of sensory accessibility touch and smell
were highlighted as important factors in the enjoyment of an exhibition.
B) Atmosphere and emotions. They pointed out that the whole atmosphere in the
exhibition influences emotions. They suggest that the ideal atmosphere for a museum is
cozy. Other topics such as shame, security and having enough energy for visiting the
whole museum arose in the discussion.
C) Concrete ideas such as having an exhibition that includes moments of relaxation and
moments of extreme experiences.
2
Note: The English quotations referring to participants’ speech of this paper are all our translations from Finnish.
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6. D) Positive experiences in other museums such as the Natural Science Museums and the
Provincial museums.
Secondly we did another regrouping of the cards (Figure 9). This time we had the
relationship between the clay pieces and the oral descriptions in mind. We separated the
cards between sensory and arbitrary features. Ware defines these concepts in the
following way: “The word sensory represents symbols and aspects of visualizations that
derive their expressive power from their ability to use the perceptual processing power of
the brain without learning. (…) On the other hand, arbitrary defines aspects of
representation that must be learned, because the representations have no perceptual
basis.” (Ware 2004, 10). One example of a sensory piece is “Cat” and an example of an
arbitrary piece is “Talking heads”. (Figure 4)
Figure 4. “Talking Heads”
In the case of the cube, the relation between the piece and the oral description works
smoothly. Moreover, there are other meanings implied, but not explicitly shown like
simplicity and easiness.
Within these two groups we found that some of the pieces have a personal and
innovative way of associating the oral description with the pieces. See the case of “Funny
and with personality”. (Figure 5)
Figure 5. “Funny and with personality”
In contrast, in others there was a direct connection as in the “Right hand”. (Figure 6)
Figure 6. “Right Hand”
Moreover there were some cases where there was no literal relation between the
metaphor chosen and the description. This is the case of the “Horn of Wealth”, a piece
that has certainly cultural connotations.
Figure 7. Diagram 2.
There are other cases in which pieces and meanings attached to them were not so
straightforward. Some of them are used as metaphors, as in the case of the “Brush and
palette”. Jouko said that the piece represents “the presence of the artist” in the exhibition.
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7. In the case of the second workshop most of the clay pieces were sensory material and
within this group there is a majority of metaphors used as a way to present their ideas.
DISCUSSION
Participants found that they could make the pieces easily and could express their ideas
through them. They told us that in some cases the pieces appeared first and then they
tried to connect it with the idea they had.
Some of the participants opened themselves up, presenting emotions. We would seldom
have imagined such issues as loneliness, shame, position in the society, religion and
spiritual issues to come up in groups of people that have not necessarily met before.
Material encourages people to talk, and works as an inspiration for thought. We have still
some open questions that we would like to explore in the future: How thought and
physical activity interact in these cases? How emotions become visible through molding,
or working with materials?
Clay as medium was a good choice because it gave enough flexibility and made it
possible to pass pieces around. In this way all the group members could touch them,
enabling sharing and understanding. Passing around the pieces was only applied in the
second workshop. This generated a lot of small side conversations within the group, since
the person passing the piece was explaining the piece to the person receiving it.
The atmosphere was quite different since in the first workshop the participants were more
engaged into a common discussion. In the second one there were constant side
conversations. This might be due to the amount of the participants and the workshop’s
program and atmosphere.
Participants were concerned to leave a piece, and make a valuable contribution but were
not committed to listen to the rest of the group. This caused that some objects were
overlapping in their meaning. This means that eventually there were two different objects
standing for the same meaning. Even some objects were repeated, such as the boats or the
men. That resulted in two objects representing the same but standing for different things.
Something that was particular for the second workshop was that there were some clay
pieces and comments that were not at all connected to the question. We constantly asked
the participants how do they connect their piece to the museum exhibition, and in some
cases we did not get a clear answer.
In the case of the second workshop we also felt that there was lot of interesting insights
that could not be undertaken in depth because of lack of time. We perceived the second
workshop group as too big and heterogeneous. The participants had different age,
background, visual impairment degree and other disabilities. How did their identity
define their participation? We think that we need a long-term engagement with this group
in order to understand their needs not only as visually impaired persons but as people
with their own background and identity. These two workshops were not enough but they
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8. gave us some hints of the kind of dialogue that we wanted to have with this particular
community. In the future the axis of this dialogue will challenge the perception of
emotion and space for the visually impaired.
We realize that the way we collect material affects the results we obtain. Thus, it is
necessary to reflect on the approach used for collecting material. The tasks presented to
the participants were well defined but open-ended. In this way people could express
themselves ingeniously. The categorization of the clay pieces forms the basis of this
analysis. The approach was chosen for both the collection of research material and for
analyzing it. These diagrams served to clarify our interpretations and enabled us to
present them in certain order. On this topic Bertin has the opinion that graphics make
visible the notions of discussion, reasoning and understanding. (Bertin 2000/2001, 11).
The material gathered is inspirational material that will be used in the next face of
Äänijälki, when we plan to implement it in Ateneum. These are also outcomes gathered
for the later design of suitable and accessible interventions in other museum spaces.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Lily Diaz-Kommonen that is always helping and encouraging us in our work.
We want to especially thank all the participants of the workshop and the staff of
Ateneum. Thanks to Arla Institute. Thanks to M. Luhtala and T. Laine who were in
charge of the video documentation during the workshops.
Bibliography
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