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Gaming Versus Storytelling: Understanding Children’s Interactive Experiences in a Museum Setting

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Interactive Storytelling (ICIDS 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10690))

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Abstract

While gaming and storytelling are considered to be common approaches to engage audiences with a museum’s collections, a formal comparison of the two has not been found in literature. While gaming and storytelling are considered to be common approaches to engage audiences with a museum’s collections, a formal comparison of the two has not been found in literature. In this paper, we present the design and comparative study of two distinct interventions, namely a mobile game and a mobile story that were designed to engage a young audience with the exhibit of the local natural history museum. Focusing on the same scientific content derived from the museum’s collection, we compare the effects of both interactive experiences on a group of children. When comparing engagement, enjoyment and learning outcomes, we correlate results with data derived from observations and skin conductance biofeedback. The data collected so far suggest that children are 27% more excited when using the game application compared with the story driven one. Moreover, we find that children’s excitement peaks when encountering selected artefacts presented in the museum exhibit. Finally, children’s learning nearly doubled (44%) when using the game based experience versus the story. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of our findings and by proposing potential future improvements.

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Notes

  1. 1.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to express our gratitude to the director and staff from the Museum of Natural History of Funchal (MNHF). We are very thankful to Dina Dionisio from M-ITI for helping us during the user-testing sessions with the children. Also, a special thank you goes to actress Sophie Gouveia from Teatro Metaphora in Câmara de Lobos. We would also like to acknowledge the work of animation students Tyler Carrigan, Pamela Gray and Amy Bruning from Edinburgh College of Art. The sound recording of a pilot whale that was used in the Ocean Stories application was provided by the Whale Museum of Madeira while sounds of a monk seal were provided by the Madeiran Institute for Nature Conservation (IP-RAM). The work reported in this contribution was developed with the support of ARDITI (Project Number M14-20-09-5369-FSE-000001), the University of Edinburgh (CAHSS Knowledge Exchange and Impact grant) and the MITIExcell - EXCELENCIA INTERNACIONAL DE IDT&I NAS TIC funding (Project Number M1420-01-01450FEDER0000002), provided by the Regional Government of Madeira.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (M-ITI), 9029-105, Funchal, Portugal

    Marko Radeta, Vanessa Cesario, Sónia Matos & Valentina Nisi

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  1. Marko Radeta
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  2. Vanessa Cesario
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  3. Sónia Matos
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  4. Valentina Nisi
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Correspondence to Marko Radeta .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal

    Nuno Nunes

  2. Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Korea (Republic of)

    Ian Oakley

  3. University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal

    Valentina Nisi

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Radeta, M., Cesario, V., Matos, S., Nisi, V. (2017). Gaming Versus Storytelling: Understanding Children’s Interactive Experiences in a Museum Setting. In: Nunes, N., Oakley, I., Nisi, V. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10690. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71027-3_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71027-3_14

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