Interviews - Alva

In order to get to know more about The Medieval Museum’s technical systems, an interview were made with the staff, more precisely a man working at the museum’s reception.

• What kind of technical devices do The Medieval Museum have?

“We do not have very much technical devices here actually. We have some projectors, tv-screens and a Audio Guide system only.”

• How does the Audio Guide work?

“Well, at the moment, they are not working at all, they are broken. But you get this little device (shows a silver rod-looking thing) and you can use it at all the stations that have Audio Guide. It costs 20 kr.”

• Ok, before they broke, did many people use them?

“Yes, there were quite a few people who used them.”

• Does the museum plan to fix the Audio Guide system soon?

“Yes we plan to do that, but the only problem is that the devices are pretty expensive, one of these (refers to the silver device) costs about 3000 kr and they often get lost or broken so the Audio Guide system is not very cost efficient. It is a matter of what we want to prioritize at the moment.”

An older couple with a boy about the age of 8 (most likely their grandson) visited The Medieval Museum. An interview with them was made, and the purpose of the interview was to get a picture of how elder people relate to technology, especially technology that is used at museums, like the Audio Guide systems.

• Do you have a lot of technical devices at home?

“Yes, if we have!” (couple laughs)

• What kind of devices do you have then?

“Well we have a lot of different devices actually. TV, computers, cameras etcetera.”

• Have you heard about Audio Guide devices that are frequently used at museums?

“Yes, we know about them.”

• Have you ever tried to use one yourselves?

“Yeah, we visited another museum a while ago, and they had those so we tried them out.”

• What did you think about them, did they work well?

“Yes they did, they were fine.”

• What do you think about them compared with real guides?

“Oh, they are not that good, we prefer real guides by far. We just came from a city tour and the guide was fantastic, she told us so much about the different places we visited.”

• Why do you prefer real guides to Audio Guide?

“Well, you can actually ask questions to real guides and they can answer them. It is also much nicer and easier to interact with a human being instead of a device.”

The couple had according to themselves plenty of technical devices at home that they used frequently. This could be a contributing factor to why they find Audio Guides acceptable.