To the ensure our proposal to Canada Council's Digital Strategy Fund was grounded in an understanding of the needs and desires of the Saskatchewan arts community, in addition to precedent reviews and other secondary research, we held two design workshops (in Saskatoon and Regina) in October 2018. We asked participants - artists, arts organization representatives, UX designers, and members of the public - to describe a time they enjoyed interacting with art digitally and a time they found frustrating to gain a deeper understanding of the design possibilities for art and technology. By understanding the context of both their current and desired paths when experiencing art, we were able to better understand when they would like technology to provide further information or context, and when they would like to put their devices away and experience the art in person. We then led participants through a design charrette - a process of rapid brainstorming and prototyping around a particular problem or issue - to begin imagining together possible digital approaches to better engage the public in the arts. We synthesized the insights from these workshops through affinity diagramming. From this process, we identified four broad categories for development: - A more personal experience of the arts, connecting viewers with artists and other audience members - Visualization of metadata to address a perceived lack of online engagement - Designing for use of the technologies both at event and at users’ homes to support those unable to travel - More intuitive navigation, suggesting the use of augmented reality to bring content directly to the viewer These categories provided the problem space for our Canada Council Digital Strategy Fund application and narrowed our focus to the primary issue that we sought to address: the challenges in communication and feelings of isolation that can occur within the Saskatchewan arts community as a result of the vast distances of our province. 
 

Written by Michael Peterson, Shared Spaces Project Manager