Recruiting volunteer Unguides

I’m thinking today about what I’m asking of volunteers for my Chawton Untours project. I’m starting a little, but not too, late. From a critical path point of view, I’d have been better to get this started a couple of weeks ago, but given that would have been right in the middle of the Easter break for the university, when most of the undergrad body were away, I’ve not lost too much by putting out the call now.

First of all, how many do I need? One is tempted to say “I’ll make do with however many I get,” but lets think about what would be ideal. I hope to run this at Chawton for a week, in order to capture a decent sample of visitors. The house is not open on Saturdays, so we might actually only be looking at six days. At any one time I’d prefer to have three Unguides operating at the same time. Part of the experiment is to explore how two or more parties in the same space with different story needs would negotiate who gets priority. You can’t do that if you don’t have two or more parties in operation at the same time. I need volunteers on week days between 12 noon and 4.30 pm. That’s not too onerous. But on Sundays, I’d need them between 11 and 5. Lets assume right now that not every Sunday volunteer will want to do all day, in which case we need two shifts of volunteers. If each volunteer only wants to do it once, that’s fifteen for the weekdays, and six for Sunday. Twenty-one. Yikes!

But that’s not all, I’d like an observer as well, recording both participant and Unguide behaviours, so lets add one of those per day, and we’re up to 27. And ideally I’d like another volunteer each day to handle the welcome, explanation and paperwork, another six then, making the total 33. Double yikes!

But as I said, that’s the ideal. I can make do with less if need be… I do want to try for five people on each day, but I could get away with fewer, even reducing the number of days of operation if its tough. Given the short term nature of the project I’ll put all the dates in and ask people to state which they might be available for when they express an interest.

So, what’s in it for the volunteers?

• You get to work in the lovely surroundings of Chawton House, so much in the heart of Jane Austen Country, that she used to live next door (OK, not quite next door).
• You get experience of working with the public in the heritage sector (so I ought to bring this to attention of tourism and leisure students too).
• You get to explore and extend the idea of adaptive narrative (this one for the ECS students)
• Lunch will be provided on the activity days.

And what do I need?

• I’m looking for people with emotional energy, confident with speaking to the public
• Knowledge of the site is not a requirement, the adaptive script will provide everything you need to say
• A reasonably up-to-date smartphone or tablet is required. The adaptive script will be delivered via Chawton’s wi-fi through your mobile device’s browser (any mobile operating system should work, but Android and Windows devices will benefit from DLNA connectivity)
• Ability to climb stairs will be needed, although there is a role that can be static, based on the ground floor.
• Availability on one of more of Sunday 4th, Monday 5th, Tuesday 6th, Wednesday 7th, Thursday 8, or Friday 9th is required.
• There may be one or two opportunities for training on before  Sunday 4th, on dates and in locations to be agreed.
• The project is at Chawton House library, in Chawton, near Alton. Access to your own transport will be an advantage.

So, I just need to put all that on a flyer.

Now Play This

Last week, I went to Somerset House for Now Play This, a three day event of experimental games. The Guardian beat me to a write up (curse you, full time journalists!) so read that, and think of this short post as an addendum.

I took my boy (aged 12) with me and our favourite game is also the top of the Guardian’s list. Dead Pixel (above) is a simple, snake-like arcade game with up to nine players, co-operating in teams of three. Its easy to pick up, and you quickly find yourself allying with a rooting for people you  never previously met and will likely not see again. By the late afternoon of the first day though, the joysticks were showing signs of wear, I wondered how many would be working at all by Sunday. Its perfectly playable with just two, unlike the platformer pictured below, the name of which I can’t recall, which relies on loads of players co-operating to get through each level. And each level is an almost entirely different game, so it takes a lot of practice, and didn’t satisfy me in the shared environment, where you want to make sure everyone gets a turn.

In contrast, Telephone, was simple joy that took less than 10 seconds to play, and you could come back to it again and again. You can try the link in the picture, but surprisingly few players actually say anything its seems…

The ten second games room was a lot of fun, especially the Brexit version of Operation

We were disappointed that the “post-apocalyptic crazy golf” outside wasn’t running on the Friday. But apart from these and the other games written about in the Guardian article, there was a whole room dedicated to one big wordsearch, a “third person stroller” wherein you control a naked man walking around on (and in!) the gigantic body of a naked man, and a case full of computer games that didn’t exist.

 

Tom and I also enjoyed a less frenetic room, that included quieter, slower games, simple mazes and one interesting plinth with letters cut into the top, that had mirror writing on one side. That side faced a mirror, but you needed to be lower than I could get to read it, so I send the boy onto his hands and knees. The rules were thus (paraphrased) “stand together looking at and admiring the plinth, talk about it sotto voce, laughing occasionally. Then leave it and see if anyone else in the room comes to see what you were talking about. If they do, you’ve won.”

We won.

 

Simulating ideology in storytelling

The Story Extension Process, from Mei Yii Lim and Ruth Aylett (2007) Narrative Construction in a Mobile Tour Guide

Another great piece from Ruth Aylett, this time from 2007. Here, she and collaborator Mei Yii Lim are getting closer to what I’m aiming for, if taking a different approach. They kick off by describing Terminal Time, a system that improvises documentaries according to the user’s ideological preference, and an intelligent guide for virtual environments which take into account the distance between locations, the already told story, and the affinity between the the story element and the guide’s profile when selecting the next story element and location combination to take users to. They note that this approach could bring mobile guides “a step nearer to the creation of an ‘intelligent guide with personality'” but that it “omits user [visitor] interests”. (I can think of many of a human tour guide that does the same). They also touch on a conversation agent that deals with the same issues they are exploring.

This being a 2007 conference paper, they are of course using a PDA as their medium. Equipped with GPS and text to speech software, a server does all the heavy lifting.

“After [an ice-breaking session where the guide extracts information about the user’s name
and interests], the guide chooses attractions that match the user’s interests, and plans the shortest possible route to the destinations. The guide navigates the user to the chosen locations via directional instructions as well as via an animated directional arrow. Upon arrival, it notifies the user and starts the storytelling process. The system links electronic data to actual physical locations so that stories are relevant to what is in sight. During the interaction, the user continuously expresses his/her interest in the guide’s stories and agreement to the guide’s argument through a rating bar on the graphical user interface. The user’s inputs affect the guide’s emotional state and determine the extensiveness of stories. The system’s outputs are in the form of speech, text and an animated talking head.”

So, in contrast to my own approach, this guide is still story lead, rather than directly user led, but it decides where to take the user based on their interests. But they are striving for an emotional connection with the visitor. So their story elements (SE) are composed of “semantic memories [-] facts, including location-related information” and “emotional memories […] generated through simulation of past experiences”. Each story element has a number of properties, sematic memories for example incude: name ( a coded identifier); type; subjects; objects; effects (this is interesting its lists the story elements that are caused by this story element, with variable weight); event; concepts (this that might need a further definition when fist mentioned); personnel (who was involved); division; attributes (relationship to interest areas in the ontology); location; and, text. Emotional story elements don’t include “effects and subjects attributes because the [emotional story element] itself is the effect of a SE and the guide itself is the subject.” These emotional memories are tagged with “arousal” and “valence” tags. The arousal tags are based on Emotional Tagging, while the valence tag “denotes how favourable or unfavourable an event was to the guide. When interacting with the user, the guide is engaged in meaningful reconstruction of its own past,” hmmmmm.

So their prototype, a guide to the Los Alamos site of the Manhatten project, the guide could be either “a scientist who is interested in topics related to Science and Politics, and a member of the military who is interested in topics related to Military and Politics. Both guides also have General knowledge about the attractions.” I’m not convinced by the artifice of layering onto the interpretation two different points of view – as both such are being authored by a team who in their creation of the two points of view will, even if striving to be objective, will make editorial decisions that reveal a third, authentic PoV.

When selecting which SE to tell next, the guide filters out the ones that are not connected to the current location. Then “three scores corresponding to: previously told stories; the guide’s interests; and the user’s interests are calculated. A SE with the highest overall
score will become the starting spot for extension.” The authors present a pleasingly simple (for a non-coder like me) algorithm for working out which SE goes next. But the semantic elements are not the only story elements that get told. The guide also measures the Emotional, Ideological story elements against the user’s initial questionnaire answers and reactions to previous story elements and decides whether or not to add the guide’s “own” ideological experience on to the interpretation, a bit like a human guide might. So you might be told:

“Estimates place the number of deaths caused by Little Boy in Hiroshima up to the end of 1945 at one hundred and forty thousands where the dying continued, five-year deaths related to the bombing reached two hundred thousands.”

Or, if the guide’s algorithms think you’ll appreciate it’s ideological perspective, you could hear:

“Estimates place the number of deaths caused by Little Boy in Hiroshima up to the end of 1945 at one hundred and forty thousands where the dying continued, five-year deaths related to the bombing reached two hundred thousands. The experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing was the opening chapter to the possible annihilation of mankind. For men to choose to kill the innocent as a means to their ends, is always murder, and murder is one of the worst of human action. In the bombing of Japanese cities it was certainly decided to kill the innocent as a means to an end.”

I guess that’s the scientist personality talking, perhaps the military personality would  instead add a different ideological interpretation of the means to an end. As I mentioned before, I’m not convinced that two (or more) faux points of view are required when the whole project and every story element that the guide gets to choose from are already authored with a true point of view. But in many other aspects this paper is really useful and will get a good deal of referencing in my thesis.