Walking around to grasp interaction

The paper presents experiences from a study using walk-alongs to provide insight into museum visitors’ experience with interactive features of sound art installations. The overall goal of the study was to learn about the participants’ opinions and feelings about the possibility of interaction with the sound installations. The aim was to gain an understanding of the role of the in-teraction, if interaction makes a difference for the understanding of the sound art. 30 walking interviews were carried out at ZKM, Karlsruhe with a total of 57 museum guests, individuals or groups. During the walk-alongs the research-ers acted as facilitators and partners in the engagement with the sound installa-tions. The study provided good insight into advantages and challenges with the walk-along method, for instance the importance of shared, embodied sensing of space for the understanding of the experience. The common knowledge of spa-tial conditions, e.g. noise, crowds, darkness provided a profound and shared un-derstanding of e.g. the visitors’ engagement in and dislike of the installations. Another finding concerns group walking that, compared to walking with a sin-gle person, generated a diversified discussion, but also produced a more frag-mented and diffuse conversation due to dynamic movement by the participants.