UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM, FACULTY OF SCIENCE
The Influence of Digital Social Games on the Visitor Experience
in Museums
Thesis Master Information Studies, track Human Centered Multimedia
Gokie Wiegers (10699856)
gokie.wiegers@student.uva.nl
Final version: January 4, 2019
First assessor: Dr. Frank Nack, University of Amsterdam Second assessor: Dr. Bert Bredeweg, University of Amsterdam
The Influence of Digital Social Games on the Visitor Experience
in Museums
Gokie Wiegers
University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, The Netherlands
gokie.wiegers@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Museums are becoming more visitor focused and are working to-wards providing more interactive museum experiences. Games provide visitors with the opportunity to interact with exhibitions and social interaction in exhibitions are more likely to increase engagement. The purpose of this research is to examine whether playing a social digital game in a museum exhibition influences the experience the player has while visiting the exhibition. To achieve this the digital social game Polderspel in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave Leiden was evaluated. Based on interviews conducted with people involved in the creation of the exhibition and the game, a survey was set up to compare two groups: visitors of the exhibition who did play the Polderspel (group A) and visitors who did not (group B). How the two groups generally experienced the exhibition was compared. This resulted in three main findings. Group A reported to experience the positive emotions "Happy" and "Curious" more often than group B. There was no noticeable difference between the grades the two groups assigned to the exhibition. Participants of group A tended to be significantly younger than group B (p = 0,000) and agreed more with the statement that they were visiting the mu-seum to mentally stimulate themselves (p = 0,030) and spend time with family and/or friends (p = 0,020). It should be noted that the sample size of this research was too small to generalize the findings to the population. Further research to this subject is recommended to include more surveys in different exhibitions with social digital games and to work with a bigger sample size.
1
INTRODUCTION
Where museums used to be a place for study exclusively, these days they are considered to be an experience. Museums become more visitor focused and technology is playing a big part in this process [11]. According to Greene it is the responsibility of museums to describe and present collections via channels that are relevant to the public [6], and to keep up with the way visitors see and interact with the world.
As Falk and Dierking stated in 1992 museums offer multi-sensory experiences and are therefore the perfect environments where meaningful learning can take place [4]. The digital changes in the museum world bring along a lot more opportunities to give their visitors a meaningful experience. A learning theory that is of-ten used in museums is constructivism. Constructivism is a theory in which it is said that a person possesses information and when they are presented with new information they will reconstruct the information they already posses based on the new information (pro-vided it does not conflict too much with their current knowledge) [24]. One learns by interacting with others and the world around
them. According to Kodi museums already posses the requisites for contructivist learning. The museum visitor has free choice in how they approach the environment and how they interact with the material. Kodi does however note that visitors must be brought into the experience somehow and find their own meaning from an exhibition [12].
Several museums are already working towards a more interac-tive museum experience. For example, in Science Center NEMO1 in Amsterdam the exhibitions are set up in such a way that visitors (mostly children) get a very-hands on experience in the form of experimental based activities. They can interact with almost any-thing and are encouraged to figure out how certain objects work.
An example of a different kind of interaction can be found in the exhibition Wonderkamers in Gemeentemuseum Den Haag2. This exhibition, which is targeted towards teenagers, provides the visitors with a tablet with which they are guided through the exhi-bition and play mini games related to the collection as can be seen in Figure 1. In this way the visitors can interact with the collection by digital means.
Figure 1: Visitors using a tablet to interact with the exhibi-tion in Wonderkamers Gemeentemuseum Den Haag [7]
Games in museums can give the visitor the opportunity to expe-rience the exhibition in a constructivist way. A player can interact with a game and take their own meaning away from it. Social games that are played with more than one player might also provide visi-tors the opportunity to learn with and from one another. In 2017 a research was conducted that showed social interaction can increase engagement. The research was conducted with 1800 students aged
1Science Center NEMO, https://www.nemosciencemuseum.nl/, Accessed 12-12-2018 2Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, https://www.gemeentemuseum.nl, Accessed
10 to 12 who came to the museum Carasso Science Park3in the city of Be’er Sheva with their class for a day visit. Observations revealed that exhibitions that facilitate social interaction are more likely to increase engagement [21]. Digital social games could enhance the user experience in museums.
The research proposed in this document will focus on the area of history of science museums. This paper examines whether playing a social digital game in a museum exhibition influences the experi-ence the player has while visiting the exhibit. To research this an existing digital social game in a museum will be evaluated. Polder-spel is a game in the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave4in the Netherlands, Leiden. It is a digital game that visitors can play together to try to complete the objective of the game, which is to manage the water in the landscape in the game. The evaluation of this game will be done on behalf ofDe Tentoonstellingsmakers van de 21ste Eeuw5.
De Tentoonstellingsmakers van de 21ste Eeuw (TM21) is a project that was started in 2017 by the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. TM21 conducts research on the subject of visitors experience in museum exhibitions. They aim to provide exhibition designers with knowl-edge that can be used to make design decisions while creating an exhibit.
To present this research this paper is structured in the following way: section 2 provides an overview of literature that is related to the subjects discussed in this paper. Hereafter section 3 contains the method of the research that was conducted for this project. It reveals the different research approaches that were taken during this project and how the research was set up. The findings the research provided are presented in section 4. In section 5 these findings will be discussed as well as the limitations this project has come across. The conclusions can be found in section 6 which also presents recommendations regarding digital social games and discusses recommendations for future work.
2
RELATED WORK
This section contains a literature review of the topics relevant for this research. The term serious games will be defined and it will be discussed how users interact with interactive screens in public spaces and how to encourage this interaction.
2.1
(Serious) Games
There are many definitions of what can be considered a game. Hansen described a game simply as structured playing, which some-times is used as an educational tool but mostly is undertaken for enjoyment [8]. Schell uses a different definition of games. He de-scribes a game as a problem-solving activity. He does however note that while a game is a solving activity not all problem-solving activities are games [18]. Because of this his final definition of a game is:
3Carasso Science Park, https://www.sci-park.co.il/, Accessed 02-08-2018
4Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, https://rijksmuseumboerhaave.nl/engels/, Accessed
14-03-2018
5Tentoonstellingsmakers van de 21ste Eeuw, http://designingexperiencescapes.com/
news/over-het-onderzoek/, Accessed 14-03-2018
"A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude." - Schell (2007, p.47) [18]
While this definition is appropriate for games, it is not an inclu-sive description of serious games. Micheal states that serious games are games that do not have entertainment, enjoyment or fun as their primary purpose [14]. However this definition alone does not cover what is meant by the word "games". For the purpose of this research this paper focuses merely on digital games. Therefore in this paper serious games are defined asa (digital) problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude that does not have enter-tainment, enjoyment or fun as their primary purpose.
Serious games are already being used in different domains such as in health care, therapy, training and education [3, 16, 17, 26]. They are applicable for the increase of motivation and can increase interest in subjects featured in these kind of games [10, 23]. One of the domains in which serious games are being used is cultural her-itage. An increasing amount of museums make use of this playful approach [11]. People visit museums to learn, look for meaning and for social experiences [5]. These three dimensions can be addressed with serious games [2]. An example of a museum that uses serious games is the China Science and Technology Museum6. Visitors can play a virtual reality game together where they need to work to-gether to complete game tasks. In this way they realize multiplayer real-time interaction[13]. The visitors can learn from the game, find meaning in the game’s narrative and because the game is played by multiple visitors at once it provides the visitors with a social experience.
2.2
Digital Interaction in Public Spaces
What separates games in museums from games at home is the moment the interaction starts. With a game at home the interaction starts when the user starts playing the game. However with a game in a museum the interaction starts earlier. This phenomena can be seen with other interactive screens in public places. The user first has to notice the interactive screen before they can decide to interact with it. Muller created the Audience Funnel Model which shows the different phases of interaction with public screens as can be seen in Figure 2. In the first phase the user is just passing by the display. If the display grasps the attention of the user they will see and react to it. If their attention is being held they might subtly interact with the system. For example, if the display responds to the image of the user, the user might wave their hand at the display to see how it responds. If the user feels motivated enough to engage with the display in more dept they enter phase four, which is direct interaction. The user might do multiple interactions before moving on to phase six. They can then take follow up actions, like taking a picture of the display or information someone about their experience with the display [15].
6China Science and Technology Museum, http://cstm.cdstm.cn/, Accessed 02-08-2018
Figure 2: The Audience Funnel [15]
Thehoneypot effect has been shown to strongly attract users in the first phase [15]. In Human Computer Interaction this effect is usually described as a social learning influence where individuals are affected by the passive presence or activity of others. In public spaces this effect is observed when passers-by move closer to system because they see others interacting with it [27]. An environment can motivate a honeypot effect by implementing spacial, interactive and social aspects.
• Spatial: The layout of the space can motivate a honeypot effect. The key designer characteristics of this aspect are that the space allows people to interact concurrently, to access control over the system from multiple access point and for the space to provide interaction possibilities that adapt to people’s skills.
• Interactivity: As shown in the Audience Funnel Framework people tend to organically transition between various levels of interactivity while the engagement increases. A way to transform these initial forms of interaction into more active engagement is to gradually uncover features of a system, which leads to discovery and active engagement.
• Social: The experience of the user of a public system is also influenced by the presence of others. The contrast between the people interacting with the system and the spectators can influence how comfortable people are with interacting with the system [27].
There are ways to use certain elements to influences the atten-tion of users for public displays. One study revealed that interactive stimuli can significantly increase attention. This includes moving images and images that respond to the movement of the user ap-proaching the system [1]. Other techniques for drawing users to public displays are to include minimal but enticing information, positioning the displays at eye level and to improve the physical context around the display to draw attention to the display [9].
3
METHOD
This research was conducted using several different research ap-proaches and steps. To see if a social digital game in an exhibition influences how a visitor experiences the exhibition, two groups were compared: visitors who played a social digital game (Polder-spel) in an exhibition and visitors who did not play such a game. It was compared how these two groups experienced the same ex-hibition. To do so a survey was conducted among the visitors. To provide a base for the survey a qualitative method was used by conducting interviews. The survey is made up out of quantitative and qualitative components. The part of the survey that focuses on comparing participants who played Polderspel (group A) and
participants who did not (group B) is set up more quantitative to compare the two groups. The reason this part of the survey is set up this way is because using a quantitative approach makes it so that the two groups can be compared based on numbers and it minimizes the change that their answers are interpreted wrong. However some other parts of the survey allowed the participants to write their own answers instead of selecting them from the sug-gested answers. This qualitative approach is chosen to get a more complete picture of the experience of the participants.
3.1
Setup Polderspel
Rijksmuseum Boerhaave7is the museum in which Polderspel is presented. The museum’s main focus is the history of science and medicine in the Netherlands. In the exhibition Water, Stroom en Data there are three digital screens that can be classified as a game. Meten als een Landmeter is the first game visitors encounter when entering the exhibition. In this game the player uses a land survey-ing to measure a distance. At the end of the exhibition visitors can sit and playPacman8, an arcade game that was released in 1980. Because Meten als een Landmeter does not contain a lot of game elements, Pacman in itself is not a serious game and because both of these games can not be played with multiple people, the third game, Polderspel, has been selected for this research.
Figure 3: Polderspel as it is presented in the exhibition
Poldergame is a digital game that can be found in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in the exhibition "Energy, Water en Data". It is created by Studio Louter9that creates interactive exhibitions and multime-dia applications for communicative spaces. The game is connected to the water theme, which focuses on how the Netherlands han-dles water related problems. Visitors play the game on a big multi touchscreen that is placed on a table in the exhibition as can be seen in Figure 3. The game can be played with two or four players. The players each stand at their own space at the table. They get presented with a top view of a piece of land surrounded by water, as can be seen in Figure 4.
7Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, https://rijksmuseumboerhaave.nl/engels/, Accessed
14-03-2018
8Pacman, https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man, Accessed 19-12-2018 9Studio Louter, http://www.studiolouter.nl/en/about/, Accessed 14-03-2018
Figure 4: Top view of Polderspel
The map however misses some key elements which are important for keeping the land dry. The players each have a collection of blocks on their side of the screen. The block contain the key elements and can be dragged to the map to fill up the holes. For example the game has some blocks with a mill on it. The players have different blocks and are encouraged to discuss which blocks to use. The players are provided with information each level that can help them figure out which blocks to use. There are four levels. In the first level the players simple have to place a mill in the landscape to pump the water out of the polder. In the second level the players need to place a series of mills, which is described as being a more effective way to pump water out of a polder. The third level introduces pumping station, which is what is used nowadays to manage water levels. The players also need to place locks in the right places, which are used to transfer boats from one water level to another. In the final level players need to face a superstorm. To protect the Netherlands they need to place flood barrier, strengthen the dunes and dykes and widen the waterways. Once the players have achieved this, they have completed the game.
Figure 5: Map Water, Stroom en Data exhibition
3.2
Preliminary Examination Polderspel
Some preliminary research to Polderspel has already been con-ducted by TM21. In 2017 they interviewed two employees of Ri-jksmuseum Boerhaave. The interviewees are curators at Rijksmu-seum Boerhaave and were largely responsible for the creation of the Water, Stroom en Data exhibit. In this study these interviewees
will be referenced to as Respondent 1 and Respondent 2. In Rijksmu-seum Boerhaave the curators compose exhibitions and work with the collections. They were asked some questions about what kind of work they perform in the museum and what part they played in the development of the Water, Stroom en Data exhibition. There were some questions about the background of the museum and the goal the museum has. The interviews mostly focused on the exhibition Water, Stroom en Data. What the exhibition looks like, what elements it has, what the story of the room is, what they think the atmosphere of the room is and what the target audience of the exhibition is [20]. These interviews were analyzed for the purpose of this project and will be discussed in section 3.3.2.
Aside from conducting these two interviews, TM21 also observed 30 visitors of the Water, Stroom en Data exhibition while they in-teracted with Polderspel. Noticeable result from these observations were that most of these visitors were younger than twelve years old (30%) and the second biggest age group was 19 to 30 years old (23%). Visitors spend on average four minutes playing Polderspel. While playing the game, 60% of the participants discussed something with other players. Most of these participants (83%) discussed with the person they were visiting the exhibition with [20].
3.3
Interviews
Following up on the conducted interviews by TM21 discussed in section 2Related Work, a third interview was conducted specifically for this research paper. The interviews conducted by TM21 with the curators of Rijksmuseum Boerhaave focused on more on the exhibition and less on Polderspel itself. To gather more information about the game and the design choices that were made during the development, the third interview was conducted with an employee of Studio Louter who designed Polderspel, and played an essential part in the creation of the game. This interviewee will be refer-enced to as Respondent 3. This interview as well as the interviews discussed in section 2 were analyzed by applying the open-coding method using ATLAS.ti10, a program for qualitative data analysis.
3.3.1 Setup. The semi-structured interview with R3 was less focused on the exhibition itself and more on Polderspel with a focus on with what goal in mind it came to exist. The questions were mainly about what the Polderspel assignment was that Studio Louter got, what the process of making the game was, what the purpose and message of the game was and with what kind of goal in mind the game was developed.
3.3.2 Interview Findings. The three interviews mentioned in this paper were conducted in Dutch. Any reference to the interviews are translated from Dutch to English. The interviews provided multiple findings regarding the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, the exhibition Wa-ter, Stroom en Data and Polderspel. The findings of these interview are presented here for each of the interviewees.
Respondent 1: The museum was founded around 1930 and has been focused on collecting and preserving science related objects. Recently there has been a shift in the museum that used to be more
10ATLAS.ti, https://atlasti.com/, Accessed 21-06-2018
collection-focused and is now more audience focused. The museum also made a big distinction between science and technology. Tech-nology was not presented in the museum but that has changed over the years. The goals of the museum is to present the history of science by the means of objects to the visitors. Water management (polderen) really shows how big of an impact technology has had on the Netherlands. The Netherlands is very good at solving problems by working together. Teamwork is a very important element of the culture of the Netherlands. Because of this the museum wanted a game that visitors can play with multiple people. It was important that they realized that teamwork is an important element in the management of water or else things go wrong.
Respondent 2: The main story of the exhibition Water, Stroom en Data is that science changes peoples lives. One of the themes within the exhibition is Water. This theme focuses on water management, teamwork is here essential. Because teamwork is a difficult concept to convey with object, the curators wanted a game in the exhibition which teamwork was an important element. They also wanted to be able to offer children something in the exhibition. Respondent 2 wonders whether visitors get that water management is about teamwork.
Respondent 3: Polderspel was designed by Studio Louter. Studio Louter works with an ’one-line concept’ in which they try to captor the essence of a product in one single line. The line for Polderspel is:
"With the help of ingenious techniques, craftsmanship and teamwork the country is kept dry despite the undeniable force of nature." Translated from Dutch. By working together the country is protected. At the end of the game the visitor should come to the realizations that they were able to win the game by working together. They should experience that the Netherlands is shaped by working together.
This was also a request from the museum, to integrate team-work and that the Netherlands is shaped by teamteam-work. During Polderspel visitors need to drag the right square to the right place on the map on the screen. the visitors participating get different squares, to encourage the visitors to discuss which piece they need. This is to encourage teamwork. While the game is educational it is also meant to make the visitor feel more relaxed. Information is presented differently to the visitor by it being in the shape of a game. The exhibition is added for variety between the other more traditional exhibitions. The ones the visitors come across before the exhibition Water, Stroom en Data are more set up so the visitor ab-sorbs the information. Once the visitor reached the Water, Stroom en Data exhibition they can be more tired, because of this the room is set up to be more active and have more interaction. Polderspel is part of that setup. It is also created for families with children.
These interviews provide some insights about the museum, the exhibition and Polderspel.
• Rijksmuseum Boerhaave used to focus more on collecting and preserving objects and are now more focused on the public.
• The exhibition Water, Stroom en Data is added as variety between the other exhibitions in the museum.
• Teamwork is a very important element of water manage-ment, Polderspel was created to convey this to the visitor. • To do so players get different puzzle pieces during the game
to encourage them to discuss and work together.
• "With the help of ingenious techniques, craftsmanship and teamwork the country is kept dry despite the undeniable force of nature" is the main message of the game that should be understood by the players.
• The game is meant to be relaxing and provides information in a more active way.
• The game is mostly designed to be played by families with children.
3.4
Survey
To evaluate the influence Polderspel has on how the visitors ex-perience the exhibition, an experiment was conducted among the visitors of Rijksmuseum Boerhaave. In this experiment the expe-rience of visitors who have played the Polderspel are compared to the experience of visitors who have not played the Polderspel. To evaluate the experience of the museum visitor, a survey was conducted among the visitors of Rijksmuseum Boerhaave. The sur-vey questionnaire was designed with the findings of the interviews in mind as well as the research methods that TM21 applies while researching exhibitions.
3.4.1 Design. The survey was designed with two goals in mind. The first goal is to test whether participants that visited the Water, Stroom en Data exhibition and played Polderspel have a different experience in the exhibition than the participants who did not play Polderspel. The other goal of the survey was to evaluate Polderspel by focusing on how visitors experience Polderspel.
The questionnaire is divided into three separate parts. The first part of the survey focuses on varieties that could explain possible effects. Aside from obtaining information about the respondent, such as gender, age and residential area this section also questions with how many people the respondent was visiting the museum and what their motivation is for visiting the museum. Motivation is being measured by a question where the respondent uses a 5-point Likert scale to rate how much they agreed on a statement. These statements are based on a factor analysis to the motivation of festi-val visitors in 2012 and are being used in researching motivations in museums as well [25]. The statements being that the respondent visited museum Boerhaave to "increasing knowledge", "experienc-ing someth"experienc-ing new", "relax", "mentally stimulate myself", "spend time with family and/or friends", "Meet new people" and "out of interest in the subject". "Mentally stimulate myself" refers in this statement to finding some form of fulfillment and meaning.
In the second part of the survey the participant is asked ques-tions to evaluate how they experienced the exhibition. To do so, the survey contains elements that are used in surveys TM21 uses to measure the experience of museum-visitors in their studies. Ele-ments such as asking the participant to grade the exhibition (1-10) [19]. The experience of museum-visitors was also measured by
using emotion scales. The emotion scales provide the participants with a range of emotions (happy, touched, absent, curious, tense and distant) and inquires to which degree these emotions were ex-perienced during the exhibition using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from "not at all" to "often" [28]. Participants are also asked how active they were during the exhibition , ranging from "very passive: I have not really looked at/read/done anything in the exhibition " to "very active: I have looked at/read/done many of the exhibition components". This question is added to the survey to measure how much the respondents feel they participate in the exhibition [22].
In the last part of this survey participants are asked which games they played while visiting the exhibition. The design of the survey has one main independent variable, being whether the participant has played Polderspel or not. If the participant did not play the Polderspel they were asked what their reasons were for not playing the game. If the participant did play the game, they receive questions about the game. The findings of the interviews show that teamwork was an important element included in the design of the Polderspel. Because of this, multiple questions were included in the survey to evaluate how well people worked together and whether they understood the main message of the game. Aside from questions about teamwork the participants were also asked to rate the game (1-10) and whether they would recommend the game to other people.
3.4.2 Setup. The survey was conducted in the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave among the visitors in the exhibition on four different days. People were asked to fill out the survey when they were at the end of the exhibition and about to leave the room instead of at the end of their museum visit. This way, participants could more easily convey their experience of the exhibition while filling out the questionnaire, because the time between the event and the reflec-tion on it is reduced. Visitors were selected on age, language and time spend in the exhibition. Because the survey does not contain language accessible for children the survey was only distributed to adults (age >= 18). The survey was only available in Dutch to pre-vent that participants would interpret questions and giving answers differently because of translation. Because of this only visitors who spoke Dutch were selected to participate in the survey.
The visitors were provided with a tablet to fill out the survey. People who visited the room without examining the exhibition are excluded from the survey, as their impression of it is most likely insufficient. Visitors who were in the exhibition for a short time and didn’t examine the content of the exhibition much, often did not want to participate in the survey, because they did not think they were able to answer the questions about the exhibition or they were in a hurry. The survey was created with the program SurveyMonkey11.
4
SURVEY FINDINGS
As mentioned in the previous section the survey was conducted in Dutch. All the references to the survey are translations. Because the data found in this survey was not normally distributed a t-test
11SurveyMonkey, https://surveymonkey.com/, Accessed 17-07-2018
can not be performed. The Mann-Whitney U test has been used for all the statistic tests in this section.
4.0.1 Participants. In this study 35 people who visited the Water, Stroom en Data exhibition in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave participated by filling in the questionnaire. One of the participants lives in the United States of America, the other participants were all based in the Netherlands. The participants were aged between 21 and 83 years old, with an average age of 47,26 years. From the visitors who participated 17 identified as man, 17 as woman and one as neither man nor woman. The participants who filled in the survey came from 22 different groups. The average group size was 2,55. Some participants visited the exhibition alone, the maximum group size was made up out of 12 visitors. Out of all the participants 14 par-ticipants played Polderspel (group A) while visiting the exhibition and 21 did not (group B).
4.1
Comparison between groups
One of the first noticeable differences between group A and B is the average age of the groups. The average age of group A was 34,31 (SD = 10,450) years while group B had an average age of 56,24 (SD = 16,570). With the Mann-Whitney U test a significant difference was found regarding the age of group A and group B (p = 0,000).
Figure 6: Graph comparing group A and B: motivation to visit the museum
Figure 6 shows how much the participants agree with statements about their motivation to visit Rijksmuseum Boerhaave. Group A and B differ in how they answered these questions regarding their motivation for visiting Rijksmuseum Boerhaave. The most noticeable result from this part of the survey are those concerning the statements "I’m visiting the museum to mentally stimulate myself" and "I’m visiting the museum to spend time with my family and/or friends". 85,71% of the participants in group A agreed or fully agreed with the statements "I’m visiting the museum to mentally stimulate myself". For the participants in group B this was only the case for 51,38% of the participants. There was a significant
difference between how the two groups answered the question (p = 0,030).
The statement "I’m visiting the museum to spend time with my family and/or friends" was also more frequently agreed with by participants who played Polderspel. 78,57% of these participants agreed or fully agreed with the statements. Only 47,62% of the par-ticipants who did not play the game agreed or fully agreed with the statement.The answers the two groups gave to this question differs significantly (p = 0,020). For both groups the biggest motivation for visiting the museum is "I’m visiting the museum to experience something new". The statement "I’m visiting the museum to meet new people" is the least agreed on statement.
4.2
Comparison Exhibition Experience
As mentioned above the survey was conducted in Dutch. All the references to the survey are translations.
Table 1. Comparison descriptive statistics grading of the exhibition by group A and group B.
Group A Group B Mean 7.93 8.05 Median 8.00 8.00 SD 0.829 0.740 Min 6 6 Max 9 9 /
Something that the groups did not differ in was how they graded the exhibition. When asked to give the exhibition a grade between 1 and 10 group A gave the exhibition an 7.93 and the group B a 8.05. As can be seen in Table 1. very similar grades were given to the ex-hibition by the two groups with no significant difference (p > 0,050).
Figure 7 shows how often participants experienced certain emo-tions while visiting the exhibition Water, Stroom en Data.
Figure 7: Graph comparing group A and B: emotions experi-enced during exhibition
As can be seen in Figure 7 the participants in group A experi-enced the emotion "Happy" more often than the participants in group B. 78,52% of the participants in group A experienced this emotion quite often or often, as opposed to 50% of the participants in group B. There is however no significant difference between the
two groups (p < 0,050).
The same goes for the emotion "Curious". 87,71% of the par-ticipants in group A who played Polderspel experienced feeling curious during the exhibition quite often or often, whereas 71,43% of the participants who did not play the game did. The differences between the two groups is not significant (p < 0,050).
In the survey the participants were asked about their level of participation during the exhibition. While there was no noticeable difference between group A and B, there is a difference between participants who did play one or more games during the exhibition and who did not play any games.
Figure 8: Participation level of participant who played games during the exhibition and who did not
As can be seen in Figure 8, participants who played any of the three games during the exhibition noted to have been more active than participants who did not play any of the games. In both groups no one described their level of participation as very passive. In both groups most of the participants described themselves as being ac-tive during the exhibition.
Next to the questions in the survey that were asked to compare the two groups, there were also sections focused on why some participants chose not to play Polderspel and on how the partic-ipants who did play Polderspel experienced the game. The most mentioned answer to the question why participants did not play the Polderspel was because they did not notice the game in the exhibition. 33.33% of the participants who did not play Polderspel mentioned this reason (n=7). The second most mentioned reasons for not playing the game were "I had no time to play the game", "I did not want to play a game". These two reasons were mentioned each 14,29% (n=3) as a reason not to play the Polderspel.
The participants who played Polderspel were asked to grade Polderspel with a number between one and ten. On average the participants graded the Polderspel with a 6.64 (median = 6) The lowest grade being a 4 and the highest grade being a 9 (SD = 1.277).
The participants were asked to rate their teamwork during Pold-erspel from "Bad" to "Excellent". 50% thought their teamwork during
the game was "Good" or (in one case) "Excellent". The other par-ticipants described their teamwork as "Reasonable" (28,57%) and "Not good" (21,43%). No one described the teamwork as "Bad". The participants who answered this question with "Not good" and "Rea-sonable" were asked what they thought could have improved their teamwork. 71,43% of this group (n=7) thought that better informa-tion provision before/during the game would improve teamwork. One person noted that the core mechanic of the game does not re-quire you to work together and another person wrote that children do not like to read and that information by audio would be more suitable. Participants also got a question about what they thought the core message of the game was. They were given options of what the core message could be and the option to fill out an answer themselves. Half of the participants thought the core message was "Pumping dry a polder requires teamwork". Another question the participants answered about the game is which words they thought applied to Polderspel.
Figure 9: Bargraph representing the frequency of words cho-sen that applied to Polderspel.
Figure 9 shows the words participants could select that they thought applied to Polderspel. As can be seen the word "Socia-ble" (n=9) was chosen the most, after that the word "Fun" (n=8) and thirdly the word "Challenging" (n=7). The word "Unnecessary" could also be selected but none of the participants did.
Lastly half of the participants who played Polderspel would recommend the game to family and/or friends. The ones that would not stated the following reasons:
• It was unclear how the game worked.
• The core mechanic was not really about the subject polderen but about solving a puzzle.
• The tiles are not really debatable, it’s just right or wrong. • The game would be more fun for children than for adults.
The first of these reasons was mentioned by four participants, the other reasons were mentioned once.
5
DISCUSSION
5.1
Evaluation of the findings
The purpose of this paper was to see how digital social games can influence the visitor experience in a museum. In order to do so, the visitor experiences of two groups in the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave were compared.
5.1.1 Comparison between the two groups. The findings showed that there are some differences between the group of participants who chose to play the game and the participants that decide not to do so. There is a difference in the average age of the partici-pants. This suggest that younger people are more likely to play the social game in the museum. This result is being supported by the observations discussed in section 3.2Preliminary Examination Polderspel. Another noticeable difference between the two groups is that while most participants visited Rijksmuseum Boerhaave to experience something new, the group that played the game was more motivated to visit the museum because they wanted to be mentally stimulated and spend time with family and/or friends. It is likely that participants who visit the museum to spend time with family and/or friends are more inclined to play a game like Polderspel which provides the participants with the environment to do so. These findings also suggest that visitors who are looking to mentally stimulate themselves (which is connected to seeking meaning and fulfillment) are more interested in playing a game like Polderspel as well. As discussed in section 2.1(Serious) Games, most visitors go to the museum to learn, find meaning and have social experiences [5]. These results suggest that visitors who go to a museum to find meaning and/or have social experiences are more inclined to play a social game.
5.1.2 Comparison visitors experiences. When comparing the visitor experience or the participants who played the game to the experience of the participants who did not there is no noteworthy difference in how these groups graded the exhibition. Both groups graded the exhibition on average with an 8. This shows that playing the Polderspel or not did not influence how good the participant thought the exhibition was. However the results of the emotionscale that the participants filled out show that participants who played Polderspel experienced the emotions "Happy" and "Curious" more often during the exhibition than the participants who did not play the game. So while the group who played Polderspel did not think the exhibition was better than the participants who did not play the game did, they did experience these positive emotions more often during their visit of the exhibition. The players who played any games described themselves as having been more active during the exhibition.
5.1.3 Evaluation of Polderspel. As discussed before in section 2 Related Work and section 3 Method, Polderspel was created with a couple of objectives in mind. The findings from the survey provides some feedback on the game.
The participants graded Polderspel on average a 6.64 out of 10, which leaves room for improvement. The main reason for creating Polderspel was because the importance of teamwork when trying to pump the Netherlands dry was not incorporated in the other elements of the Water section of the Water, Stroom en Data exhibi-tion. The main goal of Polderspel is to convey the importance of teamwork with polderen to the visitor. The findings of the survey show that half of the participants who played the game thought "pumping dry a polder requires teamwork" was the main message of the game. While half of the participants does not seem like a bad score, it is important to note that less than half of the participants played the game at all. Of the 35 participants in this research only 20% of the participants understood the message of the important of teamwork in polderen, while according to the two museum con-servators interviewed about the exhibition, this is an important element within the theme Water. Participants also noted that their teamwork could be improved by improving the information provi-sion. In general some participants gave the feedback that the game and the goal of the game was unclear. By improving the information provision and making teamwork the core mechanic of the game it is more likely to reach its objectives.
As surfaced during the interviews with the museum conserva-tors the exhibition Water, Stroom en Data was intended to be an exhibition that provides a space that is more active and relaxing than the exhibition the visitor visits before that. In this theme they also wanted to provide more space for families to interact. Polder-spel provides these elements. Participants who played PolderPolder-spel noted that the words "Sociable", "Challenging", "Fun" and "Relax-ing" applied to the game. Aside from the word "Challeng"Relax-ing" these words indicates that the Polderspel matches the intentions of the exhibition.
A finding in this research that is worth mentioning is that the most mentioned reason participants did not play Polderspel is be-cause they did not notice the game in the exhibition. Bebe-cause of this they missed the opportunity to play the game. As discussed in section 2.2Digital Interaction in Public Spaces grabbing the atten-tion of the user is an important step before they can interact with a public display. Possible ways this problem of Polderspel not being noticed could be resolved by using more moving images to grab the users attention, making the screen less horizontal and more on eye level so visitors do not overlook it and changing the physical space around it to bring more attention to the game [1, 9, 27]. This can be accomplished by for example using lighting to make the game stand out more.
5.2
Limitations
This research has some limitations that should be kept in mind when examining the findings reported in this paper. The sample size of this research is too small to generalize the findings to the population. This research being focused on one specific social digi-tal game in one exhibition also means that the findings can not be generalized to digital social games in exhibitions.
While this research is meant to represent the visitors of Rijksmu-seum Boerhaave not all visitors were represented. The survey was only available in Dutch because making different translations for the questions and possible answers could result in different interpre-tations of the questions and answers. Because of this the non-Dutch speaking visitors of Rijksmuseum Boerhaave are not represented. Another group that is not represented is children. The game is in-tended for families with children, but children were excluded from participating in the survey, because the survey was not deemed suitable for them. A third group that was not represented in this re-search were the people who visited the museum with a guided tour. Aside from them not being able to conduct the survey because they were occupied with the tour, it can be presumed that they already have a different visiting experience by having a tour guide and are therefore not a suitable control group to measure the experience of visitors who play social digital games.
Another limitation of this project is that the research was focused on the experience of the visitors and didn’t include research to whether visitors learned something for the game. This could have resulted in some more insights regarding the usefulness of the game.
6
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
6.1
Conclusion
In this project research was done on the influence of social digital games on the visitor experience of visitors of the exhibition Water, Stroom en Data in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave.
The main findings within this research can be summarized as follows:
(1) Visitors who played the social digital game in the exhibition experienced the positive emotion "Happy" and "Curious" more often than visitors who did not play the game. (2) Playing the social digital game did not influence how good
or bad the visitors thought the exhibition was. They assigned the same grade to the exhibition as visitors who did not play the game.
(3) Visitors who chose to play the social digital game tended to be significantly younger than people who did not play the game and agreed more with the statements that they were visiting the museum to mentally stimulate themselves and spend time with family and/or friends.
During this research Polderspel was evaluated based on the findings of the visitors survey. Based on these evaluations the following recommendations for social digital games in museum can be made.
For game designers:
• When creating a social digital game the purpose of the game in the exhibition and the message that may be linked to this exhibition should be kept in mind during the complete process of creation and should be reflected by the core me-chanics of the game.
• It is important that the player of the game is provided with enough accessible information about how the game works
and what the goal of the game is, so visitors are not easily confused on how to play the game.
For exhibition designers:
• When placing the game in an exhibition it is important to make sure the game is accessible and visible so visitors do not overlook the game. This can be done by adding moving images to the game, having the screen not be completely horizontally presented and on eye level and by putting it in a more prominent place or using lighting to draw attention to the game.
Regular user-testing during the process of creating a game as well as when deciding on the placement of in the exhibition can help with following the recommendations presented above.
6.2
Future Work
For future research regarding the influence of social digital games on the visitor experience in museums it is recommended to get a big-ger sample size so the results can be generalized to the population. It is also recommended to conduct the research in multiple museums with different types of social digital games to get more generalizable answers. Because social digital games are often aimed at children it could be interesting for future research to research how the games influence their visitor experience. This would require a research method that is more suitable for children. Polderspel could be more deeply analyzed to find out how such a game could be improved.
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