Making history alive and interactive: Designing an iPhone App to present the Summer War of Osaka byōbu

Mobile technology is becoming increasingly widespread in museums and cultural heritage sites, and many institutions have already developed applications that can be downloaded on mobile phones. Amongst these, iPhone Applications are certainly the most popular. The research briefly presented here describes the phases of the development of an iPhone application to interactively present the story of the people and places depicted on the Summer War of Osaka byo̅bu (traditional Japanese wooden folding screens) currently displayed at Osaka Castle Museum, Osaka City, Japan. The iPhone application will also be integrated with the Tiled Display Wall system of the Knowledge Creating Communication Research Center of NICT (Kyoto) to test various interaction functionalities.