Professor Susan Tennant of the Informatics Research Institute at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) has collaborated with the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the university’s Herron School of Art and Design, and Purdue’s School of Science at IUPUI to develop ArtXplore, a multimedia program running on a hand-held PDA. The interface highlights information on 16 objects in 12 galleries at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and provides the information wirelessly to the museum visitor. Additionally, museum patrons are able to review their experience and provide comments to the curator directly from the PDA.

ArtXplore provides audio and visual content to the museum patron, including graphics, animation, video, and panoramas. The device also provides data to the museum such as how long a person looks at the art objects, what objects are the most popular, traffic patterns and time of day patterns, and other areas such as gender differences in viewing art.

The content was provided by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Herron School of Art and Design. Students from the Herron School, the School of Science, and the School of Informatics were also involved in content development and program design.