For my first interview, I interviewed a graduate student in the history department at UCLA, who focuses his studies on the history of biology and the environment. Although he specializes in the study of science during World War II and the Cold War, he was able to provide a lot of new insights on Los Angeles. Joshua mentioned that when visiting a scientifically important place, it is important to study the topography of the place as well as the context in which the science was conducted. This made me think that it would be useful to include contextual information on the attractions/important places of discoveries (and not just the ‘what’ and ‘when’ but the ‘why’ and ‘how’) in my location-based app and possibly even recommend attractions based on indirect and direct relations. For example in his interview, he mentioned that JPL visitors should then visit Von Karman Auditorium.

 

A few user specific features he would like to see is a feature that will allow for the user to both view and participate in the exhibits. He also mentioned video and textual interpretation of the site would be helpful. This recommendation can be in the form of a voice-over guide, or even a virtual walk through of the exhibitions.  He recommended two articles of past works, both of which were very insightful.

 

My second interviewee was a historical journalist who has done many interviews on scientists and innovations. She was able to recommend various points of interests in Los Angeles, some that I wasn’t even aware of from my own research. Since she was not a researcher herself, she was not able to answer some of the questions. Generally, I think it will be useful to read up on other interviews she has done to see if I can find anything useful there.

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Joshua McGuffie Interview

Hadley Meares interview