A Study for Communication Design in Museum

• UEDA Nobuyuki(Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts)
• KARIYADO Toshibumi(Daito Bunka University)
• KANEKO Atsushi(Parthenon Tama(Tama City Combained Cultural Center))
• NUNOTANI Tomoo(Lake Biwa Museum)
• HIRAI Kyonosuke(National Museum of Ethnology)
• NAMIKI Misako(Chiba Zoological Park)
• WAKABAYASHI Naoki(Tokyo University of Tecnology)
• MIYATA Kimiyoshi
• KURUSHIMA Hiroshi
• KOJIMA Michihiro
• SUGIYAMA Shinsaku
• HIROSE Kazuo
• FUJIO Shin'ichiro
• KOIKE Jun'ichi
• YASUMURO Satoru
• SAWADA Kazuto

The theme of this cooperative research, entitled "communication design," is defined as "the establishment and structure of lines of communication between experts and amateurs and between persons whose positions and interests differ." In this cooperative research, the term "experts" refers to researchers (or the results of their research) and "amateurs" refers to visitors, while "lines of communication" refers to exhibitions and media which help support visitors’ appreciation. The purpose of this research is to study methods for communicating the research results at museum and methods for solving the diverse communication problems of a museum. In addition to the above stated purposes, we also want to discuss how the museum can play their role in offering opportunities for cultural creation to each visitor.

Efforts at improving visitor education seem to have been made all over Japan. In this research, we want to redefine the word "education" as "visitor communication" by working in cooperation with researchers from a variety of academic fields. Concretely speaking, by actively using formative research (formative assessment conducted in the midst of the production process), we want to develop and test a museum driven program based upon each research member’s field of specialization. In actual practice, we will try to organically connect the museum’s exhibitions and its research projects by using its exhibition halls and exhibited materials. We hope to build up the structure of an implementation and research system through the development process of communication design in a museum,

Program implementation at the National Museum of Japanese History

Preliminary educational program prior to school excursion making use of the Rakuchu Rakugai Screens for the students of Yotsukaido Kita Junior–High School

Program implementation at the Yotsukaido Kita Junior–High School

Post–excursion educational program at the junior–high school

Workshop at the National Museum of Japanese History

• WAKABAYASHI Naoki
• KUSUNOKI Fusako

Three–way discussion on report annals, with the theme "Concerning Communication at Museums"

• NUNOTANI Tomoo
• UEDA Nobuyuki
• HIROSE Kazuo

Workshop at the National Museum of Japanese History

• KOJIMA Michihiro
• HARADA Yutaka
• Sho Igo

We held a workshop with the theme of developing a program for historical exhibitions. We spent the first half of this workshop viewing the exhibition "Capital in the West, Capital in the East" with the visitor assistance tools. We carried out an investigation and discussion on the tools during the second half of the workshop.

• KOJIMA Michihiro
• SAITO Yuuka
• KARIYADO Toshibumi

We held a workshop with the theme of communication in exhibition areas.

• NAMIKI Misako
• KANEKO Atsushi

We held a workshop with the theme of schools, teachers and museums.

• TANAKA Yuki
• OGAWA Hideaki
• MORISHIGE Takeo

We toured the permanent exhibitions with the guidance of Assistant–Professor Kojima during the morning. In the afternoon, each member of the research team made an introductory presentation concerning his or her research. Keeping with our theme of the cooperative research, we discussed how it would be possible to test our ideas on communication design by using the exhibitions at National Museum of Japanese History. Additionally, we discussed methods for developing trial contents and establishing a web site in order to diffuse the information from the workshops.

The theme of this workshop was evaluating exhibition development. We took part in the examination of a trial exhibition in the third exhibition hall of National Museum of Japanese History. We began this workshop with fieldwork, an examination of the real "Edozu Byoubu" (a view of Edo on folding screens) as well as a digitalized version of its contents, an exhibition on the trades in Nagasaki, the digitalized contents of the Asakusadera Temple and of each exhibition’s panel. We discussed the results of our research at the laboratory. Yuuka Sato gave a presentation together with Mr. Ogawa, a teacher from the Sakura Minami Elementary School in Sakura City, concerning interviews of his students to obtain their opinions about the renewal of the third exhibition hall, which had been carried out two days before. After this presentation, we exchanged our opinions concerning the overall study of the renewal.

The central topics of the discussion concerned investigative methods, as well as where and how to evaluate such investigations. A second presentation was made by Mr. Nunoya on the study carried out at the exhibition in the Lake Biwa Museum. His presentation included a historical and methodological summary of the exhibition and the study.

We organized an investigation tour and visited museums in Seoul. We planned to carry out this cooperative research in Japan, however, we decided to visit the museums in Seoul for the following reasons:

• The National Museum of Korea (opened in 2005) and the Samsung Museum of Art (opened in 2004) are attracting international attention;
• After having discussed the research policies and contents of the project, we decided to focus on research concerning digital media in museums. The National Museum of Korea and the Samsung Museum of Art are actively introducing digital media for their visitors; and
• Both the National Museum of Korea and the Samsung Museum of Art have concluded an agreement with the National Museum of Japanese History, and therefore, it is meaningful to have their opinions on museum education.

On January 12, we visited the National Folk Museum of Korea. We viewed the exhibitions with the assistance of a recorded voice guide. We exchanged opinions with Mr. Kim Shi–Deog and Mr. Che Ginsu concerning the development of voice guidance programs and their future prospects.

On January 13, we visited the National Museum of Korea. Our contact person was Mrs. Yi Wunmi, the education officer of the museum. Each of us toured the museum freely using voice guidance and a PDA. In the afternoon, we toured each of the lecture rooms in the Children’s Museum, Lecture Hall, Craft Laboratory and Programming Room of Visually Impaired Visitors. After the tours, we all exchanged opinions with Mrs. Yi Wunmi and Mr. Jang Sang–Hoon of the Department of History.

On January 14, we visited the Samsung Museum of Art, in Leeum. Each member toured the museum individually using a PDA.