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Chapter 30
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-4490-8.ch030
Museum Information and
Communicability Evaluation
ABSTRACT
The authors present the first results of a heuristic analysis of the evolution of the commercial off-line sys-
tems related to the main European museums. The analysis is diachronic, that is, since 1990, and includes
the different modalities of interactive design in the different supports for interactive information, such
as floppy, CD, and DVD. The authors also present a methodology for the analysis of the presentation
of the paintings and sculptures inside these systems called Museum Information and Communicability
Evaluation (MICE).
INTRODUCTION
The history of the off-line multimedia systems
in the 90s gave a boost to many sole proprietor
companies (a single person in the ruling board)
in Southern Europe devoted to the commercial
production of interactive contents. Those were
small businesses with fewer than five employees,
including the owner of the company. In that group
there were technicians and artists. This division
was typical of Latin countries such as Spain,
Portugal, France and Italy, just to mention a few
examples. The technicians were the programmers
who mainly used commercial products such as
MacroMedia Director (MMDirector) or Toolbook.
There are scarce examples of that time where
C++ programming was used to carry out those
interactive systems. The artists, as a rule, stemming
from the fine arts. Took care of the visual design,
the textual content, etc. Few were the artists who
hailed from the environment of the graphical arts
for those multimedia systems. The commercial
Francisco V. Cipolla-Ficarra
ALAIPO – AINCI, Spain and Italy
Alejandra Quiroga
Universidad Nacional de La Pampa, Argentina
Jim Carré
University of The Netherlands Antilles, Curaçao
Jacqueline Alma
Electronic Arts – Vancouver, Canada
Miguel Cipolla-Ficarra
ALAIPO – AINCI, Spain and Italy