Collaborative prototyping and hacking

Interactivity is a complex phenomenon to apprehend. Past researches have defined interactivity in contrasting terms: from a tautological expression of a computer-based system (Adams, 1999) to an independent system capable of intelligent dialogue (Smuts, 2009). We are presenting, based on the literature review, the spectrum of interactivity as a gradual complex system that can evolve in time.
The majority of interactive apparatuses evaluated in academic publications have all looked at the interactivity under the prism of the audience engagement. However, following authors such as Crawford and Weissberg, we are arguing that interactivity has its inherent properties, independently of the interactor and its environment.
The context of this research is specified in the first part of this thesis by introducing, not only the interactivity but also the museum as a public space in quest of interactivity and finally, the hacking methodology. This methodology is inspired by the hacking community and has evolved into a creative process. We are then running an experimental study mainly based on Museomix, the playground of our research, where collaborative prototyping and hacking are part of the core values for offering new mediation to museums.
This thesis presents the development of a holistic approach to understand and classify interactive apparatuses based solely on their properties; this has led us to propose a comprehensive framework to collect information from a large dataset of experimentations and to demonstrate the potential of this framework to provide a deeper understanding of the modes of interactivity and help us to classify them in our context of museology.