1 Introduction

Some strategies for social appropriation of science, are related to museums and interactive centers which are scenarios where design is able to manage a quantity of implicit thinking; strategies that design supports through the different representation and materialization ways that constitute the designed exhibition.

Several disciplinary fields have had an approach to the interaction concept, having a special evolution when talking in education and communication, motivated by the changes that technology advance impulse, making new environments available, media and channels to make it possible, register and save informational contentsFootnote 1; new technologies, which characteristics are interactivity and diversity, as a result, people are not passive receptors anymore, they are active actors that manipulate and decide the order, complexity and quantity of information they want to receive, taking into account that information is received by different senses, and its is not just about the written information, as it is now presented as a spectacle issue.

An interactive exhibition is the one that reacts to the visitors acts, and at the time, motivates an answer from them, establishing a dependence between the visitors and the exhibition itself. That is why it has to be designed, understanding that the visitors’ learning process is not unidirectional and can include affective and social way, or even psychomotor skills. The success of an interactive exhibition is related to the fact that when a person is motivated for learning, emotions and feelings are involved in a significant way, also the thoughts. (Léonie 1996).

In that way, and relating it to the design of interactive exhibitions, it appears the question how interactivity is understood and how it has to be defined in the design process, because that would allow a greater success and harmony in the communicational goals that is looking for, as it is to approach people to knowledge.

In the field of design there are several interpretations or definitions to the interaction concept. In the case of interaction design (IxD), is an interdisciplinary field that has the purpose of defining the behave of products and systems that interact with people. The interaction design products are normally developed with interaction analysis and users tests. Interaction designers prioritize users’ goals and experiences, and evaluate the design in terms of “usability” and affective influence.

In the case of interactive centers, the concept is used to motivate visitors to use and manipulate objects, as a way to propitiate experiences about science, where they are disposed as a particle, that when used by a visitor, this one at the time becomes one, activating the phenomenon and propitiating the interactivity. Traditional museography has taken the concept in recent decades, in a centered communicational process way, where, according to Alejandro G. Bedoya, interactivity is the capacity of the receptor to control a non-lineal message to the grade establish by the emisor, within the limits of asynchronous communication via (Mestre and Piñol 2008). This definition refers to the idea of hypertext, convergence or randomness in communication processes.

In a full-scale way and having said, interaction, then, refers to the intervention of senses, because through them the communicational fact takes place, where cognitive activity is involved.

2 Main Hypothesis

The interaction in an exhibition is established by the relation between the design, as a material result of a thinking and planning process, the aesthetics, as the expressive external qualities of the exhibition, and the knowledge that can be potentiated in the visitors through the exhibition.

The exhibition is characterized as changing a group reality/space/time, where a link is established, that in one hand, achieves the goal of making a contribution to the learning process and the knowledge appropriation, on the other hand, the exhibition’s visitor, who, thought the interaction and the aesthetics embodied experience, creates a cognitive relation to the knowledge, making their learning process possible. The design as a process that originates the exhibition, creates the physical world for the visitors to interact. A hybrid physical media created, where the control in the design process is possible in order to stimulate the interaction.

Interaction appears when visitors react with emotional basic acts to that physical environment that the exhibition is, the aesthetics interaction is a result of the visceral emotional reaction that the visitor has, face to the phenomenon or reality that catches his/her attention. Taking into account that the aesthetics interaction is only possible related to external conditions or events that, as the exhibition, can characterize the relation that people has with the world. Design has to take it as a reference to understand and propose interaction and materialize that physical external and artificial environment to be created.

3 Development

To create a new interactive exhibition, from design, to propose an experience in the visitors that has to have place thanks to the physical and representation environment, those materialize the exhibition, however the exhibition itself is not just they; without ignoring the attractiveness and pleasure that has to characterize it as a gateway to the cognitive process that is established in the pleasure and fun that visitors find in the physical phenomenon that they experience.

The research is systematic, its main purpose was to inquire how the interaction takes place in an interactive exhibition, and how the objects and all the physical environment act and are assumed by the visitors. Thus, the research is based, among others, in the Maurice Merleau-Ponty approaches, and phenomenological philosophy, who proposed that it is not possible to understand and assume the world but for its “faculty”, and the “sensitivity” can only take place linked to a physical specific context (Merleau-Ponty 1994; Calvo Garzón 2007; Sacrini and Ferraz). In the same way, the approaches in the pragmatic aesthetics of Richard Shusterman, who ensures that the world can only be justified as a “aesthetic phenomenon” ((Shusterman, Aesthetic experience) (Kul-Want, 2007), and that body, mind and instrumentation are the core of the experience, being this an approach different from the analytic aesthetics which understands the aesthetics denying the aesthetic qualities as natural (Shusterman, 2002).

Such a theoretical frame allowed to understand the interaction in an exhibition as an aesthetic experience, product of perception and temporary hookup of visitors; an experience that gives a place to a continuous interaction-cognition of body/mind/media. Considering that aesthetics acts not as a contemplation issue, but as a result of interaction, that is to say that thinking is dynamic and implies a continuous link between sensation and action, between the internal and external world, between subject and exhibition.

The systematic approach realized in this research from the design perspective, was methodologically based in the recourses and tools of the ethnographic work, such as conversation analysis, immersion in context, coexistence and observation, for giving place to explanation and interpretation, as they show the questions that took place while analyzing the interaction in an interactive exhibition.

After the field work and relating it to the theoretical frame it was possible to conclude that the interactive exhibition can be understood as a “dynamic form”, its expressive qualities are tridimensional material objects, bidimensional and digital tools that may vary in dimension and technological complexity that enable interaction and aesthetic experience in people. A designed dynamic form that establishes a complex and hybrid atmosphere, were people have a link or a ludic approach to the phenomenons and science knowledge that compose the exhibition, and propitiating their learning. People that through the continuous interaction body/mind/brain build their own perception about the exhibition. Where socio-cultural approach, values and behaviors happen, thus, the aesthetic experience is favorable from the atmosphere of the interactive exhibition, that implies that people are known from cognitive dimension, embodied, perceptual-motor, emotional and socio-cultural.

With the methodology and after a six month fieldwork in two different scenarios, during a semester, using technological tools as eye tracking, and filming of the visitors’ experience, it was possible to analyze how the aesthetic experience in the interactive exhibition is built in different levels.

Those levels happen from the espatial-architectual dimension of the space where the exhibition is, followed of access to knowledge areas and the general scenography, and direct interaction with activation areas or interaction interfaces. Those levels act simultaneously and responding to the users diversity that are in the exhibition at the same time, they constitute a whole dynamic form, that sensitize and prepare visitors for free and open interaction with the phenomenon and information that they can find in the exhibition.

School visitors arrive to the exhibition formally and disciplined by the school rules and the influence of teachers, but when students get into the exhibition atmosphere they leave that formalism and act as themselves, they create groups by affinity and fellowship, creating spontaneous groups that plan their route through the exhibition. This sets the mood and the emotional attitude for visiting the exhibition.

The areas or interfaces that use high tech, weird objects or in movement equipment attract visitors’ attention. They move thought the exhibition in disorder, a non established route, in a funny way. When visitors face interaction areas they do not read instructions, they do not try to understand the order or logic or the way to use the equipment, they just push buttons, pull handles or go directly to interfaces. They are especially attracted to activities, phenomenon and equipment where their own body is used as part of the explanation, because the challenge and the opportunity to make a comparison with their mates is funny for them.

They try to make everything work at the same time if they do not receive any feedback they immediately abandon it or try interaction in other part, they just wait for a few seconds. The elements information, and the aids that exhibition offers for communication they just ignore them. When a specific area or phenomenon catches their attention, curiosity and anxiety for discovering, identifying and understanding what happens, is what keeps their attention and interest and gives a place for them to build or create theories and interpretations.

When a phenomenon or action area that they use is nice they try to make it last longer, it is about the aesthetic experience as a result of the interaction with the exhibition and the reaction is to try to make it last for “pleasure”, this kind of situation enables the appropriation of the information and potentialities some learning. Interaction and aesthetic experience are evident in conversations, attitudes, expressions and visitors’ behavior.

After visiting the exhibition, visitors recreate it from the experience, they do not relate specific aspects or aesthetic qualities, they describe the visit relating it to their daily life. In some cases they relate some learning or reference information in the exhibition, they keep in mind that exhibition was about science and they do not forget the funny moments at the exhibition.

In a rigorous and focused on design way, five factors were identified, for taking into account in the creative process, this factors act simultaneously and mold the aesthetic experience and the interaction in the exhibition, they are:

  1. 1.

    Social an physical context, they create the atmosphere. All the situations and aspects that are “sensitization ways” or the environment that pushes people to interact. This is about social and the collectiveness that people visit the exhibition with, and the physical environment that works as a scenography, an external world that can be done, modified and proposed from design.

  2. 2.

    The movement, as an extension of events in time. Is the main factor that determinate interaction and builds the experience in the exhibition, visitors make their tour through the space related to external references as they are the activities and the physical characteristics of the space. The different experiences of the exhibition are related to the displacement that visitors make in the space and the events that happen while touring, and also some aspects of the interaction itself.

  3. 3.

    The attractiveness, which is related to all the things that motivate or attract visitors to interact in certain activities or spaces, most of attractiveness is about the aesthetic appearance or the expressive qualities of the form of the exhibition module, as also the motivations that appear from the relations and social situations at the moment of interaction.

  4. 4.

    The activity, referred to all those individual and collective situations that happen while people are interacting with the exhibition and the physical environment. They are: behaviors, habits, displacements, search, they constitute the dynamic relation between people-people and people-objects. The exhibition as a chain of “events” that integrate visitors, some of them structured and planned, others spontaneous and unpredictable, they all constitute the interactivity.

  5. 5.

    The demonstration is the factor that creates the expectation in people, they expect a result after the activation of a phenomenon, or the interaction with the exhibition model. The experience that is produced by the interaction is centered in the verification of something (a principle, concept, data, etc.) from the own experience of visitors (Fig. 1).

    Fig. 1.
    figure 1

    Design factors that determine the interaction

    Full size image

4 Conclusion

An interactive exhibition acts as a learning environment. It has the physical conditions that make possible all sensitize to the aesthetic experience. It is a dynamic form that enables interaction, from expressive qualities, which gives place to the aesthetic experience understood as the emotional state of the subjects. They, the visitors of the exhibition, through the embodiment of sensations that the form inspire, and attracted by the expressive qualities give a sense to their emotions, interact and access to knowledge. That interaction is the result of the link of design, as the creator of the exhibition, the aesthetics, as expressive qualities of this, and knowledge as a result of the interaction of people there. The exhibition is an external world where visitors are conscious of this world, so they can understand and judge it. Those levels of the interactive exhibition, and due to the design process are the resource that can control the design in the creation of the interactive exhibition. The five identified factors understood in a conscious and systematic way can contribute to a higher efficiency an impact of the exhibition.