Interview and analysis - Erik Forsberg

I conducted my interview with a man from France in his 30’s at Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet.

Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? It’s about the future and how we can make musem visits better?

Yes of course, I can try.

How often do you usually go to museums?

Each time I visit a new city.

If you imagine all the museum you have been to, what has been the best part?

I usually like natural history stuff and about animals

Could you imagine using an application or something on your phone to make the museum better?

Maybe there will be some application you can download that give all the information about the thing you’re watching on your phone and give details about it so you can listen to it. Sometimes it’s not easy to find all the details and information about the thing you’re watching.

Okay, so you would use some sort of app to give you more information about the exhibit?

Yeah, more detailed!

Do you think this museum (NRM) is good for tourists?

Yes, absolutely.

Do you think there’s too much information or too little?

Actually not so much information, maybe just the names but I think it’s one of the better ones I have seen and I’ve been in so many cities and museums.

Is there any museum that you have been to that is better than the rest because of one thing?

I was in Lisboa, there was a kind of water museum where I could see real animals. That’s why it was so good.

Analysis of interactive material at the museum

My analysis is of an interactive game at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. It was a reaction based game where you had twelve buttons scattered across a wall, each with a different fruit on it. When the game starts, one of the buttons lights up and you are supposed to press it as fast as possible, so that another button lights up and so on. If you are not fast enough, you miss your chance on that button and thus miss the chance of a point. The goal was to press as many lit buttons as you could in 50 seconds.

I actually think that the game was supposed to teach the player about something, but I didn’t really catch what that was while playing since you were so focused to press the button that was lit at the time. This exact problem, or occurrence has been talked about in the course, and the recommendation was to try and just make a game fun - not something that is centered around learning because the joy is usually lost then.

This game doesn’t necessarily target tourists, which is our target group, but I guess they would be just as inclined to play the game as anyone else in the museum, as long as they have some sort of interest in competing with their friends. That was what got our group’s attention - the competition. We immediately understood that we could beat each other in the game, which made almost everyone in the group willing to play at least once. I also believe that a lot of younger people would play the game, as older people are less into looking silly while mashing buttons on a wall and would see the game as childish.

The game obviously works well at catching people’s attention - you really can’t miss someone playing the game if you walk past and it does look fun. If you stand back a little bit and watch someone play, you get the impression that they are doing a terrible job since you can see all the buttons much easier from a distance and they can only look at one at a time which makes it very hard to hit every button that lights up.

So in conclusion, the game works well at just being a fun game, but if it in a way could include some sort of clear teaching process while still keeping the competitive focus and the fun in the game, the game would be brilliant and a great hit at the museum. A suggestion I would give for the game designer is to keep a daily high score so that you can compare yourself to other people who has visited the museum.