Community garden: designing for connectedness in online museum exhibits

We present Community Garden, an interactive museum exhibit designed to promote connectedness both at the museum and online. To interact with the exhibit, participants draw and share flower petals which are displayed on a communal field, blooming with flowers of other participants. The exhibit's drawing interface is accessed online, allowing for live participation and inclusion of people who cannot physically visit the museum. This paper describes some of the design principles that shaped the development of the exhibit prototype, as well as the technology that allows the exhibit to function, requirements for demonstrating, and future plans to evaluate the exhibit.