Stochastic visits

Let’s define it straight away: “‘stochastic’ being a fancy way to say ‘random’ and ‘unpredictable.'” That definition comes from Falk, J.H.. 2016. Identity And The Museum Visitor Experince. Oxford: Routledge, which is the very last bit of reading recommended by my external assessor that that I am writing about in this series of blog posts. I note its often cited in her own articles so I think its a heritage experience ‘bible’ she keeps close at hand. And its a good work, published after my literature review (it did include other Falk works), but one that addresses many of the gaps that I felt the review was missing revelations about visit motives that we knew within the National Trust through market research, but which were not expressed so clearly in the literature.

What Falk tries to do with this book is create a model for looking at the museum experience, which her says “is not something tangible and immutable; it is an ephemeral and constructed relationship that uniquely occurs each time a visitor interacts with a museum.” He starts though, with the visitor at the moment, before ether set foot on site, that they decide to make a visit. Their motivation is says is related to their identity (and we can have a number of identities. I, for example am a Cultural Heritage professional and a father. My reasons for deciding to visit a place will be different depending on which ‘me’ is making the decision. Falk says that identity related motives generally fall into one of five categories:

• Explorer – “The typical Explorer visitor perceives that learning is fun!”
• Facilitator – Facilitating parents and facilitating socialisers, both meeting the needs of others in their group
• Experience seeker – motivated to visit primarily in order to “collect” an experience, “been there, done that”
• Professional/Hobbyist – a tiny proportion of visitors but often much more influential
• Recharger – not a large proportion of visitors, but may be more regular visitors, as we discussed before

So where does ‘stochastic’ fit in? Well, Falk describes how each identity motivation has a trajectory to their visit.”Rechargers and Professional/Hobbyists probably have the “straightest” trajectories. These visitors typically enter with a fairly specific goal in mind, a relatively sophisticated understanding of the physical layout and design of the museum, and a fairly clear sense of how to accomplish their goals […] the trajectories of Explorers and Facilitators are much more generalized and less laser-like. The Explorer is seeking ‘interesting things’ while the Facilitator is seeking ‘interesting things for others.'”

Rechargers and Professional/Hobbyists “can and occasionally do get side-tracked by experiences outside of their initial intentions, but for these two groups, this is the exception rather than the rule. More often than not these visitors make a beeline to the exhibits or spaces they are interested in, spend whatever time it takes to accomplish their goal(s), and then depart. Although they may “graze” upon exiting, this is primarily to take
stock of things for their next visit.” But the Explorer is guided by “their own inner compass which is ‘magnetized’ by the visitor’s unique prior knowledge, experience, and interests. They can’t tell you what will pique their curiosity before they get there, but once inside the museum, they will know immediately what interests them!”

Facilitators “are primarily attuned to the social aspects of the visit; they are focused on what their significant other finds interesting and enjoyable. Facilitators […] tend to sublimate their own interests and curiosities unless they feel that by sharing these, they might be helpful in satisfying the needs and interests of others”

Experience Seekers come somewhere between the Explorer and Facilitator “but rather than satisfying their personal curiosity or the specific intellectual needs of their companions (though both of these are very likely to be strong secondary motivations), the Experience seeking visitor is in search of what is most famous and important in the museum. They have come to see the Hope Diamond or the Mona Lisa, or whatever the museum is most famous for.”

It’s important to note that whatever initial motivation a visitor has for going to a museum, they may well change to another one while they are there, depending on all sorts of factors – who they are with, something there see, all sorts of things. But Falk’s point I think is that Rechargers and Professional/Hobbyists are less likely to be distracted from their original motivation, and while experience seekers are somewhat more likely, they are on a tight timescale with other places to tick off their top ten list, so the groups most likely to make a stochastic visits are then Facilitators and Explorers. I think my Chawton experiment is deigned to respond to a guide stochastic visitors, so arguably more tied to these two visit motivations.

Finally, I love this quote about satisfaction surveys – its definitely something we noted at the National Trust:

Currently, the overwhelming majority of museum visitors find their museum visit experiences very satisfying. This is in part because the public has a fairly accurate “take” on museums and thus possesses relatively accurate expectations. It is also in part due to human nature; we have a propensity to want our expectations to be met and work hard, often unconsciously, to fulfill them, even if it means modifying our observations of reality to match our expectations.

page 159

Heritage Soundscapes

At my viva my external examiner pointed me towards this interesting paper, which she had co-authored – partly, I think, as an example of how I should restructure the discussion of my Chawton experiment in my thesis. But it contains some real gems ( like “the museums studies literature points out the restorative value of an aesthetic experience that is clear of any information acquisition or learning objective and is centred instead on the sensorial experience of being there”) that makes me regret missing it in my literature review: Marshall, M. , PETRELLI, D., DULAKE, N., NOT, E., MARCHESONI, M., TRENTI, E. & PISETTI, A.. 2015. Audio-based narratives for the trenches of World War I : intertwining stories, places and interaction for an evocative experience. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 27-39.

It’s a case study of a prototype “visitor­ aware personalised multi­point auditory narrative system that automatically plays sounds and stories depending on a combination of features such as physical location, visitor proximity and visitor preferences” Voices from the Trenches for a First World War exhibition at the Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra in Italy. What particularly interest me is that its part of the Mesch project which has some other outcomes which I refer to in my thesis. The paper describes their intent to move away from what they call “the information­ centric approach of cultural heritage.” I am sure a number of my professional colleagues would bridle somewhat at this accusation. After all, did not Tilden tell us in the 50’s that interpretation was more than mere information? But one od the things that my Chawton experiment uncovered was that actually too much “interpretation” turns out to be mere information after all.

The authors summarise previous experiments in responsive soundscapes, such as LISTEN, which “composes a soundscape of music and/or commentaries depending on the detected visitor’s behaviour: visitors that are not close or are moving are classified as unfocussed and for them a soundscape is created, while visitors that are standing still and close to the artwork are classified as focussed and a narrative (e.g. the curator describing the artwork) is played over the headphones.” Though many soundscapes are delivered by headphone, to avoid sound pollution for other visitors, the interesting project SottoVoce is designed around eavesdropping on what other people in our party are listening to. Half the respondents (in groups of two) heard the soundscape from each others phone speakers, while the other half had headphones. “When in loudspeaker mode visitors focussed on what was displayed on the screen of the mobile device and stayed close to the sound source while partners linked via the same audio on their headphones had a more dynamic visit driven by each other’s interest in the exhibits.”

“The ability to convey and evoke emotion is a fundamental aspect of sound” they say, and explain “The affective power of voice and audio storytelling has been recognised as creating a connection to the listener and is even amplified when spoken words are not coupled with the visual capture of the storyteller, creating a sense of intimacy and affective engagement.” An they built their soundscapes using the same sort of mix of music, speech and other sounds that I used (in a limited fashion) at Chawton. Some of the primary source material was recorded to sound more like oral history, with actors reading the words “with palpable emotion” to be more affective. The responsiveness is similar to that of LISTEN, but the “staying still” metric isn’t used, instead a simpler proximity method is used. woven into that soundscape are voice recordings for attentive listening, which is selected by the visitor choosing from a selection of cards. The sound was delivered by loudspeakers but, unlike SottoVoce, not on people’s own devices, rather places around the site. This was what I did for Chawton UNtours too.

The particular challenge with this project was that it was outdoors.The difficulties of maintaining equipment, connecting power and data etc means that most sites resort to delivering via mobile device. But on the other hand: “While engagement in a museum tends to be via prolonged observation, in an outdoor setting multiple senses are stimulated: there is the physical, full­body experience of being there, the sight and the sound of the surroundings, possibly the smell too. The multi-sensory setting places the visitor in direct connection with the heritage and enables engagement at an emotional, affective level rather than at a pure informative level.” (p6) The danger of using a mobile device to deliver interpretation is one I wrote about here, but essentially it stake them out of the where they are, it is the antithesis off presence.

With all this in mind the designers of the project set out five clear principles:

• To engage at multiple levels, not just cognitive
• To focus the visitors’ attention on the heritage, not the technology
• To deal with group dynamics sensibly
• To be provocative and surprise visitors, but design simple and straightforward interactions
• To personalize content on the basis of clear conditions

The choice of sound over anything screen-based was an outcome of the second principle. Loudspeakers rather than headphones was also an attempt to focus attention on the heritage: “During a small experiment in a local outdoor heritage site, we observed that audio creates a wider attraction zone where passers­by become aware of the sound source, and a closer engagement zone around the emitting point where one has to stop and listen in order to understand what the voice says.”

So they designed a soundscape that featured music nd sound to attract visitor to a location and then vice recording to hold them there. The narratives are arranged thematically, with different voices (authoritative and intimate) indicating the nature of the content. Quite how the visitor chooses is not really made clear but I expect it is by approaching the voices that most attract them.

The team trialed the idea by observing the visitors behaviour using about 23 minutes of content, but I was disappointed that they did not come up with any solutions to the problems we encounter trying to evaluate the soundscape at The Vyne. It is hard to observe and distinguish between active listening and background listening. The authors seen to assume that if the active listening content is playing, then the partiocilapants are actively listening. The only evidence they have for this is a qualitative questionnaire, which I am not convinced is an accurate measure on engagment. Yes they said they enjoyed an benefitted from the experience, but if they did not know that was what was being tested, what proportion would have even mentioned the soundscape.

Of course they identified a number of challenges, not least fine-tuning the volume to be loud enough to attract attention and yet not so loud to cause discomfort. This is especially true of the different voices, with some by necessity quieter and more intimate. Of course they also predicted issues overs scalability – similar to the ones I planned fro but wasn’t able to properly test at Chawton “how well would such a system work in a busy environment with many groups interacting.”

Back, for a while at least

Woah! It’s been over a year since I last post anything on here. I return because later today is my viva voce, wherein I “defend my thesis.” Yes, that’s why I have been silent on here, I have been hammering my thesis into a shape that I am not ashamed of, reading it, proofing it, getting others to read it and proof it (and yet, yes, there are still typos) and submitting.

For the last couple of weeks, in preparation for tomorrow, I have been re-reading the thesis, meeting (virtually) with my supervisor and recruiting an old friend and academic Jane Malcolm-Davies to read it and to give me a practice viva, last week. Reading it is hard though – after a year of writing and re-writing, the words flow through me like a purge barely touching the sides. And all I take note of are the things I might have done better. The practice viva was a very useful experience though, and so I thought I might give myself another “practice” by writing this post.

What brought me back to the blog was recognising a sentence that had survived from one of my earliest posts, though eight years of other work and re-writes and edits. This blog was a useful way of processing my reading and other research as I was going it. It wasn’t what I needed though when I was rewriting the words that might have started on this site. And as this is the last chance to read my own thesis for the viva, I thought I might process it with a blog post in a similar way, hopefully anticipating some of the questions

Who is my audience?

One question Jane asked me about the thesis was “who are you writing this for?” And it’s a good question. It gave me pause to think. But I think the answer is I writ it for myself, and for people like me, heritage professionals who want to explore what digital interventions might be like, and who don’t want to be reliant on digital suppliers to tell heritage organisations what they need.

When I started this, eight years ago, I came into it with a truly open mind. My question really was “what can I and my fellow heritage professionals learn from games about storytelling in space?” I had no agenda, no thesis I wanted to test and, importantly no real experience in computer games. I guess I saw computer games as competition for my sector. Not financially speaking really (we are no completion for that global behemoth of games production); but for share of mind or… actually share of mind. I often tell the anecdote of a colleague who came to me saying that a game had made him cry the night before. At the time our organisation were trying to improve “emotional impact”, and as someone who had spurned computer games in my teens because they didn’t engage my emotions. I was intrigued, at the time my organisation was very interested it what we called emotional impact. If computer games could make my friend and colleague cry, perhaps we could learn something from them about storytelling.

So I didn’t apply for the PhD with any sort of hypothesis in mind. This was possibly a mistake, but I genuinely wanted to work out how games (and I should say “open world games”) that let the player wonder around an environment, manipulated emotion.

How did my research change?

When I started out, if I had any defined ambition at all, it might have been to create an application that tuned a heritage visit into some sort of investigative game. And I think I was definitely imagining the mobile device as the conduit of communication between place and person. Two bits of my research changed that ambition, neither of which fit into the main narrative of the thesis but were I feel worthy of including in an appendix, if only to explain why that wasn’t a route I was following.

What was a surprise to me, was during the “reading” of the three games I played, the realisation of just how poor heritage storytelling is. Note I say storytelling here specifically. It can be argued that “heritage interpretation” isn’t “storytelling,” but such an argument is broadly incompatible with a desire to engage visitors emotionally. This became research in practice with two aims: the first to see if heritage interpretation narratives could be broken down into natoms (narrative atoms), stored and reassembled to satisfy visitor’s needs; and secondly to explore how they might be put together in an emotionally engaging way.

What would I have done differently?

With the benefit of hindsight, of course I would have concentrated on this narrative conundrum from the beginning, but even arriving at the conundrum was, for me, a damascene revelation. As a professional interpreter who has been confidently telling stories in the sector for decades, realising that I might have been telling the “wrong” stories.

But practical things I would have done differently – it was only in the latter stages that I realised what useful tool Robin Laws’s story beats and transition analysis was. I wish I had found it earlier and used it to analyse at least parts of the three computer games I read.

Speaking of things I wish I had found earlier. When I was scouting around in the early stages for a “narrative database” I could easily use, the meSch project, which is written specifically for curators and heritage professionals, was only just starting. In the end I used Scalar which is written for academics, but not for the heritage environment. But had meSch been around it would have been a perfect platform to experiment with

One other thing that might fit as an answer to this question is, had I switched to my current supervision team earlier in my research I could easily have been persuaded to drop the narrative track entirely and focus instead on music and sound – where there is simply not enough research on its use in the heritage environment.

Challenges

Focussing on the academic challenges, the subject of cultural heritage interpretation overlaps so many academic disciplines that even producing a literature review was really hard. And then, pushing the work forward, I felt all the time I was falling between two stools – science and humanities. For example, exploring affect outside of the psychology, and databases outside of computing, but at the same time wanting to write something that could be understood, and taken forward, by both museum professionals and data engineers.

Where do I take this?

In the conclusion I detail a number of potential paths for further research. The one that I am most interested in professionally if further understanding, and potentially measuring, numen. I think this concept is closer to what museums and heritage sites really mean, when they talk about emotional engagement. But defining in properly and working out ways to measure it, will take a lot of work.

I am also excited by meSch – a tool written for professionals just like me. And I would love to take it for a spin on a future project, creating adaptive, personalised stories for visitors. But not just “visitors.”

I say that because my research was based very much around making the experience of people in places better, talking about responsive environments better meeting visitors’ needs. I deliberately eschewed virtual experiences, except when I first prototyped an adaptive story for the then closed Clandon Park. But in the last few months visiting places physically has been restricted. And its made me realise that the paradigm shift in story telling that I have advised for responsive environments might just as easily be applied to virtual visits. Despite being only a prototype, the Clandon experience was more satisfying for me as a creator, for reasons I explain in chapter 4. Perhaps there is be a chance, a need even, to create new personalised adaptive event numerous stories on-line.

Well that’s all the time I have. My via starts in 30 seconds

wish me luck

A Thank You to the Chawton team

Not the most flattering photo of me ever, as I give an Untour, with Ryan observing. Photo: © Chawton House Library/Darren Bevin

Well, that turned out to be be more exhausting than I had expected. It went very well though. Only one of the visitor (group)s that I approached chose not to come on an Untour, and that was just because they were short on time, having come to see the village’s open gardens as well as the “Great House”. That was on the last day, and was more than made up for by a visitor actually requesting an Untour in the final minutes before last entry. She was very effusive with her appreciation, and indeed, every participant seems to enjoy the tours, despite my pauses as I waited for the wi-fi to catch up with us.

What caught me by surprise (though it shouldn’t have) was the energy required when engaging with the public all day. I say it shouldn’t have, because I used to do that for a job at Hampton Court Palace. But I didn’t come home from that job quite as exhausted as I felt by the end of the week. Maybe I’m just that much older, and more out of shape, or maybe the extra work of limiting my interactions to what the “natom database” defined used more brainpower. But as it turned out all I wanted was to sleep through Sunday. And Monday actually, but I had to go to work.

But this post isn’t all about me. Other people devoted energy to the success of the project too. I want to take this opportunity to thank everybody involved at Chawton, all the staff of course, especially Darren Bevin the librarian, but also the volunteers William and Yvette and intern Ryan. Ryan has, moments ago, sent me his notes from observing a numbers of tours, and he also filmed a good number of tours which give me a few hours of video evidence to analyse too (just as soon as I can find somewhere to securely store all those gigs of data!). I’d also like to thank all the participants who willingly because my test subjects.

Now I have to get my head around all that analysis,which means coding the evidence with Atlas TI (which means learning Atlas TI) and start writing it up. At the same time, I need to edit/rewrite my incredibly long first chapter in my thesis into three or four chapters, plus an introduction. Which I need to have done by the end of next month. The write up of the experiment and the results I have a little longer to do, I’m thinking the end of September. So this week, I’ll make sure my data is filed property and the video stored securely and backed up a couple of times. Then I’ll leave off thinking about Chawton for a while, and go back to Scrivener to get my thesis in shape for the upgrade, which I’ll need to organise for December.

 

Chawton Untours live: progress review

Its a rainy day today, and so Chawton House Library is seeing very few visitors. I guess that many visitors come to the village to visit the Jane Austen museum, and if it’s dry a good proportion of them follow that up with the short stroll to the Library. But when it rains, with the choice of a warm and dry pub OR a cafe just across the road from the Jane Austen Museum, I guess most people decide they don’t want to brave the weather to come here.

The quiet afternoon does give me the opportunity to reflect on Untours so far. The first thing to note is how helpful every visitor I’ve approached as been. Not one has refused to let me give them an Untour. They have also been helpful on the tours, clearly expresing their interest in objects etc. I wonder how much their behaviour is changed by their awareness of  being observedt, but I don’t think, in the final analysis, that will matter very much for what I get out of the experiment. They’ve also been very patient and forgiving when the (somewhat flaky) wi-fi takes time to get up to speed.

I have the minimum number of volunteers, so I’m currently doing all the Untours, with the volunteers (Ryan doing most of it, and Yvette and William from Chawton’s own volunteer body helping out when Ryan isn’t around) in an observer role, either taking notes or filming the exchange. It does mean that one thing I wanted to test – where two groups come into the same space with different story needs – isn’t something I’ll be able to learn about this time.

I’m not going to make firm conclusions here, not until I’ve had a chance to look at all the evidence, but there are some observations I’ve aleady made. One such is that it seems so far that trying to direct people’s attention my turning lights on is having little or no effect. This maybe because most days, the lights don’t make much difference in the naturally and artificially lit rooms of Chawton House Library. Today, with the gloomier weather, my lights are all more noticable, and I was hoping to see if they finally did start attracting visitors’ attention. But I’ve only given one Untour so far today…

Music/sound seems to be working well*, sometimes the visitors’ behaviour keeps it in the background and sometimes they actively listen. It will be interesting to look back on the week’s notes and films and see if there’s any indications whether particular pieces of music trigger specific responses.

*My wizard of Oz solution for the music isn’t brilliantly reliable – I set the music running, and then set the relevant speaker. The music is all on-line, short pieces on Scalar itself, and bigger files on an AWS server I recently set up for an entirely unrelated podcast. Occasionally one of the servers (I’m not sure yet but I think its only the Scalar one) takes so long to deliver the music that my device (an iPad) raids its own music library for something to put on the speaker. The first time this happened, it was Adele’s heavy piano chords, so I notice in time to stop it and go back to the Austen themed piano pieces that should have played. Subsequently I deleted the iPad’s entire music library, but just yesterday it managed to drag up the Pretenders from somewhere.

Halfway through this post we got a visitor who happily joined my tour, and she was followed by another very interesting couple. So I didn’t manage to finish writing the above until now, Friday morning. Ryan collected a lot of video evidence today, with everyone consenting to be filmed, so that will be interesting to look back on.

Chawton Untours launch

The exhibits are in place, the interactive script is done, the sound files are all uploaded to the server and the lights and speakers are all in place and plugged in. In a little under an hour* we launch Chawton Untours.

The weather is a bit wet and windy today, so its anybody’s guess now many visitors will brave the elements to come to Chawton House Library. But a slow start will might be for the best – I’m sure there will be some snagging today as visitors make choices I haven’t predicted in the script.

The beauty of Scalar though is that I can make changes quickly on-line and they’ll be in place for the next Untour. Indeed this whole experiment is to uncover and solve problems, the sort of problems future “ambient interpretation” algorithms will need to deal with.

You can help by coming to Chawton and joining an Untour. We’re running the experiment until Saturday 10th June. If you are reading this, and can get  to the house (near Alton), I’d love to welcome you.

*Well actually, although I wrote that an hour before opening, I’m about to publish this post just before closing. 

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.

Abstract: Digital Personalisation for Heritage Consumers

I’m speaking at the upcoming Academy of Marketing E-Marketing SIG Symposium: ‘Exploring the digital customer experience:  Smart devices, automation and augmentation’ on May 23 2017. This is what I wrote for my abstract:

Relevance to Call: Provocation, Smart Devices. Augmentation of the Customer Experience

Objective: A work-in-progress research development project at Chawton House explores narrative structure, extending the concept of story Kernels and Satellites to imagine the cultural heritage site as a collection of narrative atoms, or Natoms, both physical (spaces, collection) and ephemeral (text, video, music etc.). Can we use story-gaming techniques and digital mobile technology to help physical and ephemeral natoms interact in a way that escapes the confines of the device’s screen?

Overview: This provocation reviews the place of mobile and location technologies in the heritage market. Digital technology and social media are in the process of transforming the way that the days out market is attracted to cultural heritage places. But on site, the transformation is yet to start. New digital interventions in the heritage product have not caught on with the majority of heritage consumers. The presentation will survey the current state of digital heritage interpretation and especially the use location-aware technologies such as Bluetooth LE, NFC, or GPS. Most such systems deliver interpretation media to the device itself, over the air or via a prior app download. We explore some of the barriers to the use of mobile devices in the heritage visit – the reluctance to download proprietary apps, mobile signal and wifi complexities and most importantly, the “presence antithesis” the danger that the screen of the device becomes a window that confines and limits the user’s sensation of being in the place and among the objects that they have come to see. Also, while attempts to harness mobile technology in the heritage visit display interpretation that is both more relevant, and in some cases more personalised to the needs of the user, they also tend towards a “narrative paradox” – the more the media is tailored to the movements of the user around the site, the less coherent and engaging the narrative becomes.

Method: Story-games can show us how to create an experience that balances interactivity and engaging story, giving the user complete freedom of movement around the site while delivering the kernels of the narrative in an emotionally engaging order. At Chawton we plan to “wizard of oz” an adaptive narrative narrative for that place’s visitors.

Findings: Work so far demonstrates that a primary challenge for an automated system will be negotiating the contended needs of different groups and individuals within the same space. The work at Chawton looks to address this.

**

This is the first time I’ve written an abstract in this format, and I found it quite a challenge. What you add in and leave out is always a difficult decision, and this format, which was limited to one side, had me opting to leave out the references which I might have made room for if I had not had to write something under each of the prescribed headings. It’s also the first time I have had formal feedback on an abstract, which I share below:

Relevance to call: Good fit Smart devices, user experience,
augmentation, culture (5)
Objective: A practical case example of augmentation in a
heritage setting (5)
Lit rev: No indication of theory used, as this is a practical
case study (n/a)
Method: A specific case of Chawton House presented. (5)
Results: Interesting findings re barriers to use of mobile
devices in heritage, and the experience evaluation (4)
Generalisations: Interesting and original context of heritage
institution using augmentation, can extend to
other heritage sector applications. (4)
Total 23/25

**

So, not a bad score, but I wonder what I would have got (out of 30?) if I had included the references. Does the bibliography count within the one page limit? Or, could I have included it on a second side?

Still, not time for those questions. I have the write the actual presentation now. 🙂

You can help… and get yourself a wifi speaker

I want to start with a clip of the Thamesmen’s 1965 classic “Gimme Some Money”*, because that’s the point of this short post. You may be aware that I need some versatile wifi (not Bluetooth) speakers for my experiment at Chawton. I spent considerably longer that I expected looking for some that did what I need, and also were affordable within my budget. I did eventually find some that were a few pennies less than £150 which was, to be honest, a good deal more than I wanted to pay but considerably cheaper than the alternatives.

I bought a couple to test. Not only do they do what I need, they do more. I needed them to work with all the wifi standards including Apple Airplay and Android, but they also have very good Bluetooth connectivity. They are very easy to operate internet radios, and two or more can be linked for a Sonos-like multi-room experience. They’ve got a great battery life. I think they are also very beautiful, designed with real Scandinavian flair. They are very well set up for a life beyond my experiment. Which brings me to my point.

Would you like one?

Having tested these two out both at home and on Chawton’s wifi network, I was prepared to buy the other three I need. Only to discover the price had gone up! Now, I’ve been in touch with Libratone, and they have kindly given me a discount that brings them close to the price I bought them first two at, just a few quid more than £150. So, I was wondering if anyone out there was thinking about buying a speaker like this for your house, or for a present, who might be prepared to let me use it for a week in June first.

If you want to help me buy one, I’ll keep all the packaging etc. and look after the actual speaker very carefully of course. Then after the Chawton experiment, I’ll reset it to factory settings, pack it all back up in its original packaging and mailing box, and send it you, paying for tracked delivery. (Given that the price rise is probably due to currency fluctuations, I think this is only likely to be an attractive offer to UK based helpers.) In return for helping me out, you’ll be able to take advantage of the discount Libratone have offered me, and of course you’ll have earned my eternal gratitude.

If you are interested you’ll probably know me well enough to have private contact details for me. If you don’t and are still interested, then I thank you for your trust. I won’t let you down, comment here, and I get in touch with you. I only need three more speakers, so it will be first come, first served. If you are quick you can also choose what colour you want.

*Fans of Spinal Tap will be aware that there wasn’t really a 1965 hit from the Thamesmen.

Untours moved to June

I had a great meeting with Gillian Dow at Chawton today. To be honest, I’d been worrying about it for weeks, knowing that the story development was in no state to be complete in time to run the even in March as we had agreed. I’d even been nervous about contacting Gillian, knowing I was letting the Library down on a promise I’d made last year. But worrying was not going to solve anything, so I bit the bullet last week, and wrote a short email explaining my problem, and fixing today’s meeting.

Gillian was very understanding, and we’ve fixed a new date for the experiment – the week between the 4th June and the 11th. But not only that, I think we cracked one of the main story problems I’d been having. Gillian went straight to the crux of my problem: that Montague Knight seems the obvious character to hang the story of the house upon, and yet his own biography doesn’t quite offer the emotional arc that I was looking for. Though he wrote (with his cousin, William Austen Leigh) the history of Chawton and its owners, its stops short of his own time there, and the emotion beat of loss happens after he dies, childless.

But it doesn’t, Gillian pointed out. Yes, Montague’s home improvement efforts at Chawton all seem positive and upbeat, but they are counterweighted by the loss of the home he grew up in family seat. When he was 30 his father, Edward, sold the family’s Kent home, Godmersham Park. Suddenly, all the work Montague put in at Chawton gets an extra significance. And there’s an emotional beat, loss, which can resonate in the story of the dismemberment of Godmersham and Chawton’s libraries. It could also celebrate the news of some of that collection, a 1833 “Bently” set of Austen’s work with Montague’s bookplates in, being donated back to Chawton.

In other news I also tested the out the wifi plug controller and speaker with Chawton’s network, and they both worked. So all in all, it was a VERY good morning.

*Edited to reflect my realization that Montagu didn’t grow up in Godmersham – his father lived with this family in Chawton from 1826.