Ad-hoc interactions in a museum

Recent years have seen an increasing availability of interaction device types. This has posed a number of issues for identifying suitable criteria for the design of interactive software applications. At the same time, network communication technology has evolved enabling more flexible protocols for communication among dynamic sets of devices, thus opening up further possibilities. In this position paper we discuss the various levels of interactive support that is possible to make available using a museum application as case study. The aim is to enable each interaction device to support the appropriate tasks users expect to perform and designers to develop the various device-specific application modules in a consistent manner.