The Rotunda Visit by mike porter

Hi there readers,

The visit we took the other day to the rotunda I found rather inspiring with the different advantages and disadvantages of some of their interactive exhibits. The touchscreen plinths were very good for a basic task, however, agreeing with Bruno, I did find them a little limited with their single touch interface, meaning they could only ever display things that require a single mouseclick.

The program was a little dissapointing as it just seemed a bit of a standard "push this button to go to the next screen" feel although I did appreciate the "go back" button that allowed you to exit the quiz or information and go back a screen if you wished.

That said, I still think the quiz could have still been a little more engaging than just the pressure of having a timer and I got bored of it after a while.

The main attraction, the landscape designer for dinosaurs was pretty cool, allowing simple click and drag, although it's sensitivity was lacking by having to apply rather heavy force on the touch glass. This exhibit did make instructions more practical by allowing the user to have a clear screen, whilist a voiceover got the users listening in and therefore concentrating on the exhibit, which I felt was a real strength of it.

Despite all that was said, I feel that using this kind of technology on our patch, whilst making it more challenging, it will encourage us to develop a pactch together that is simple yet effective and something that many people will be interested to use.

mike :)