RFID technology : fostering human interactions
Résumé
This paper presents a specific application of the RFID technology: the game "Plug - Secrets of the Museum" (PSM). It takes place in the museum of Arts and Crafts in Paris. The goal of PSM is to explore and demonstrate the potentials of the RFID in term of services and to explore the new type of interactions that it enables. In this paper, we first describe the design of PSM and its technical implementation. Then we describe how we tested the technology. We then present the results from the testers' feedback and from our observations of the game. We will see that NFC reader phones change the way museum visitors read, understand and interpret the artifacts by giving them an active role in the search for information while giving them the possibility to write and reorganize virtual museum contents. In this game, information becomes a valuable item to be negotiated with others in face to face interactions that are prepared by the virtual quest. Based on Goffman study of interactions, we analyze here how the technology is not only context aware but create new forms of communication based on mobility, proximity, shared activity, and physical contact that can eventually lead to new rules of civility