Interaction Paradigms in Technology-Enhanced Social Spaces: a Case Study in Museums Franca Garzotto 1, 2 and Francesca Rizzo 2 1 Faculty of Industrial Design - Politecnico of Milano, Via Durando 10, 20131 Milano, Italy franca.garzotto@polimi.it 2 Department of Electronics and Information - Politecnico of Milano Via Ponzio 34/5, 20133 Milano, Italy rizzo@elet.polimi.it Abstract This paper investigates, through a case study, the interaction paradigms that can be adopted in a museum exhibition involving hybrid interactive artifacts, i.e., installa- tions that support visitors manipulating and interacting with physical and digital exhibits [6], [1]. We discuss the design principles and solutions we adopted in a tem- porary exhibition titled “The Fire and The Mountain”, where we integrated technologi- cal and physical artifacts within a multi-sensory exhibition space to foster enjoy- ment, engagement, and, ultimately, learning, and to promote a variety of social be- haviors among visitors interacting together with hybrid exhibits. We also discuss a field study we carried on to evaluate the user experience in "The Fire and the Moun- tain", and the lessons we learnt. 1 Introduction The new ICT paradigms of ubiquitous, tangible, or social computing allows the de- velopment of digitally-augmented physical spaces that foster new forms of social interaction in indoor or outdoor settings – e.g., home, workspace, library, theater, museum, town square, exhibition hall, archeological site- among proximate face-to face peers and remote mates. Social interaction in digitally augmented spaces may take different forms, from on-site or remote communication to collaborative learning, gaming, playing, [6], [7], [9], [16]. This paper investigates, through a case study, the interaction paradigms that can be adopted in a museum exhibition involving hybrid artifacts, i.e., installations that support visitors manipulating and interacting with physical and digital exhibits. Although many people love to visit museums together, many exhibitions are not explicitly conceived as convivial experiences. For obvious reasons of preservation and security, installations are designed to avoid any physical interaction with the exhib-