Keywords

1 Introduction and Background Work

The value of social interactions during cultural visits is advocated in several museum studies [1]. Aiming to foster verbal communication between a pair or group of visitors, research and commercial works have exploited a variety of techniques, ranging from synchronized audio listening [2, 3], to creating shared projection spaces [4, 6], or/and offering content variations on the mobile phones of the group members [5, 6], in order to promote information exchange between the participants.

Moving in this direction, in our previous work we proposed a storytelling game for groups of visitors, asking the group members to make and share stories about the artworks of a cultural collection [7]. The game is inspired by the popular board game Dixit and it is titled “Find the Artwork behind the Story!”. It defines a pervasive group experience that takes place and evolves in the environment of fine art exhibitions, combining moments of personal reflection to social encounters through the game phases (described in Table 1).

Table 1. Game phases in each episode of “find the Artwork behind the Story!”, with N players
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We first conducted a series of playtesting sessions with physical materials in different environments and exhibitions, exploring the game’s affordances and requirements [7, 8]. We then produced to a mobile-based design to support the proposed game, leveraging the visitors’ personal handheld devices as game controls [9]. Moving one step further, we currently investigate how the artists of cultural collections may be involved in the described game experience.

In this work we propose that the artists participate as players in the group game, listening to the stories and explanations that visitors make about their artworks, and sharing their own stories and reflections during the game. To the best of our knowledge this is a rather novel approach, since joint artist-to-visitor participation in gallery games is hardly explored.

To that end, we performed a user study where an artist participated as player in a group playtesting session, taking place in his personal art exhibition, and thus enabling the participants to have a personal, hands-on experience with the proposed gameful scenario. The primary objective of the study was to examine how the artist’s involvement in the game shaped and affected the group experience, investigating its affordances to foster communication and interactions between art gallery visitors and creators.

The secondary objective of the study was to evaluate two new components that were recently introduced in the mobile-based game design [9], namely the Speeding and the Guessing bonus, guiding the following game iterations. The former bonus is targeted to the Voter role and it was added to motivate quick pacing, aiming to address duration concerns that were reported in prior playtesting sessions [7]. The latter is targeted to the Storyteller role, providing an in-game activity that aims to promote social awareness, while also reducing the “waiting time” that is potentially encountered by the Storyteller during the voting phase [10].

2 User Study Description

Leveraging the 3-dimensional framework proposed by Christian Roher to classify user experience research methods [11], the described user study constitutes a qualitative field study, generating data about participants’ behaviors or attitudes based on observing them directly. We combine attitudinal to behavioral observations, examining what the participants “said”, along with what and they “did”. During our analysis we extrapolate results from on-site behavioral observation and video-recoding analysis, to participants’ feedback through open questions and questionnaire items, which were used in a combined way to guide one-to-one interviews in the following. Aiming to examine issues that are broader than application usage and usability, we did not leverage the mobile game prototype (whose alpha version had just been released by the time of the study). Physical materials were employed instead, in line with our previous work.

2.1 Participants

An open invitation was announced at a research laboratory of the University of Athens, asking to participate in a user study that would include a game, taking place at the on-going (at that time) exhibition of Stefanos Rokos, at the Benaki Museum. The invitation prompted the interested candidates to invite also the persons form their personal social networks who would most likely accompany them in a typical cultural visit or social event.

The selection criteria leading to the final group formation were that i) the participants are adults, and ii) they had all met each other at least once in the past (to ensure a minimum level of familiarity between the group members). A social group of three university colleagues with their partners was formed, containing 3 women and 2 men, all in the age range from 30 to 45. Two of the participants reported that they were familiar with the artist and had already visited the exhibition before, but they felt they did not have the opportunity to reflect on the artworks due to highly crowding conditions, expressing their desire to visit it again.

The participants were informed about the meeting time and were given the option to make a free-visit in the gallery before playing the game (up to an hour ahead). One day before the visit, the participants filled in a pre-play questionnaire (online, using Google Forms), entering demographic data and indicating their prior experience with art exhibitions and storytelling games. It is worth noting that 4 participants had played the board game Dixit in the past, so they were already familiar with the main game objective.

2.2 Exhibition Environment and Playtesting Conditions

The exhibition contained 14 paintings, inspired by the 12 songs of the album “No More Shall We Part” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds + two b-sides. The gallery layout was structured in three main areas, implying the feeling of a temple. The artworks were displayed on the walls, on the left and right areas (see Fig. 1).

The strong connection to the music album was reflected in the gallery’s syntax in several ways. First, the songs’ titles and lyrics were presented on large columns, facing directly the corresponding artworks, and thus indicating the dialogue between the two forms of art. Second, the album was continuously playing on the gallery’s background, gradually going over all the album songs. In addition, the visitors could use their mobile phones to scan the QR codes (located at the side of each column) and listen the selected song through headphones. When located in the central area of the exhibition (Fig. 1), visitors had partial visual access to the surrounding artworks.

Fig. 1.
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Overview of the exhibition environment and layout

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About two weeks before the user study, we contacted the artist, Stefanos Rokos, first through email and then via phone. We informed him about the gameplay we are exploring, our previous playtesting sessions, and the objectives of this research. Then we asked him if he would be willing to participate in a playtesting session at the environment where his personal exhibition was currently hosted, having a “hands-on” game experience, with a group of invited participants, playing over his artworks. The artist expressed his interest in joining the session and suggested specific timeslots in order to avoid crowding conditions that would impede him from being committed to the gaming process. As a result, the user study took place during off-peak gallery hours (Thursday morning, May 23rd, 2019). During playtesting the number of concurrent “external” visitors in the gallery remained lower than 10, at all times.

2.3 The Game Experience

For the user study purposes, the described group game is implemented with physical materials. All players are handed private pens and post-its packs, using color coding notation (i.e. a different color is assigned to each participant). In addition, the Storyteller is provided with a hand-crafted notebook. Each page of the notebook corresponds to a game episode, i.e. one Storyteller turn, and it is organized in three vertical parts, following the temporal succession of the game phases (see Fig. 2).

On top, the Storyteller writes down his/her story, along with the title of the artwork behind it (which remains hidden by placing a post-it on it). The Storyteller narrates the story to the group, and then the voting phase begins. The middle part of the notebook is the area where all Voters’ choices are placed on. The Voters use their post-its to privately note down their selections (i.e. the title of the artwork). To complete voting, they approach the Storyteller and stick their (hidden) votes on the appropriate placeholder frame.

Fig. 2.
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Crafted paper notebook: layout and contents (left) and snapshots showcasing its use by the Storyteller during playtesting (right)

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When everybody completes voting, the group proceeds to votes revealing and explanations phase. The Storyteller is expected to lead the discussion by gradually uncovering the hidden votes and communicating the results to the whole party. Finally, the scoring table is maintained at the bottom part of the notebook, where all player’s scores are progressively added next to their name initials. When the episode is over, the Storyteller turns the page, reads the name of the next Storyteller and hands on the notebook (the bottom part of the paper pages has been cut off, supporting scores’ maintenance and update through the game episodes).

To support the introduction of the Speeding Bonus in the gameplay, we numbered the voting frames on the notebook, indicating the vote-completion ordering. The first player who approaches the Storyteller places his/her vote on the 1st frame, the second one uses the following frame and so on. The SB notation signifies that the particular player (i.e. the one with the yellow post-its pack in the episode depicted in Fig. 2) is candidate for receiving the Speeding Bonus. During the scoring phase, if the vote on the first frame matches the Storyteller’s selection, one extra point is given to the corresponding player (third column of the Scoring Table in Fig. 2).

To implement the Guessing Bonus, we printed small paper “guessing cards” that depicted the forenames of all the group members, along with playful, personalized avatars. When storytelling is over and voting starts, the facilitator hands a guessing card to the Storyteller, prompting to predict and circle the Voters who would find the artwork behind the story. As soon as the first Voter approaches the Storyteller and completes voting, the facilitator informs the Storyteller that there are 10 s left to complete the guessing process, and then asks to deliver her the filled-in card. During scoring, in order to acquire the extra point of the Guessing Bonus an “exact match” was required, i.e. all the Voters that had been circled by the Storyteller needed to have voted “correctly”, and only those (i.e. non-indicated players needed to have missed it).

2.4 User Study Procedure

On arrival, the participants were informed about the context of this research and filled out the consent forms, allowing for video-recoding. When the whole group was gathered, the facilitator explained the gameplay, handed on the post-its and pens to the participants and presented the crafted notebook, explaining its usage during the game. The Speeding and Guessing Bonuses were introduced, and then the playtesting session started.

A camera was set on a tripod at the end of the central area of the gallery, where the group gatherings were anticipated to be mainly taking place. In addition, a dedicated human recorder was following the Storyteller during the playtesting sessions, enabling to capture and analyze the majoring of group discussions. Finally, the game facilitator was present during playtesting, delivering the Guessing Bonus cards to the Storytellers.

A round of 5 game episodes was completed in about 1 h and then the group moved to the museum’s coffee shop, where each participant filled in a short post-play questionnaire (~5 min), evaluating their game experience, indicating their willingness to participate in future games, and finally reporting the strong and weak points of the game (through open questions).

In the following, the facilitator announced to the group that they were going to play one more round, but this time the artist, Stefanos Rokos, would join them, participating as player in the game. A few minutes later the artist arrived, and he was introduced to the group members who were not familiar with him. Not having played the game himself before, the artist asked the group members to describe him their experience, leading to a group discussion. At some point, one participant suggested to share the stories they had made with the artist, and see if he would be able to find the artwork behind them. The artist and the majority of the group members strongly welcomed the idea. So one by one, the participants announced their personal stories to the artist (reading them out loud from the game notebook were they had been written down) and the artist selected one of his artworks that seemed to match it. Then the corresponding participant revealed the identity of the selected artwork, explaining to the artist why he/she had selected it. Some of the votes were also discussed, sharing different perspectives with regard to the story and the artworks. In essence, the game round was “repeated” away from the exhibition’s environment, now having a new, “special” voter to be playing along (Table 2).

Table 2. Summarization of user study phases
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When this process completed, the group moved altogether at the exhibition’s space. The artist took the initiative to invite the museum’s exhibition designer, Natalia Boura, to participate as well. Although not originally planned in the design of the user study, we welcomed the participation of an additional “special” player. In addition, one of the participants decided to refrain from the game due to health issues (pregnancy discomfort). The new, extended group of 6 players (4 visitors plus the artist and the exhibition designer) started a fresh playtesting round. The game was completed in about 50 min, and then the group moved again at the coffee shop. The participants filled in a second questionnaire and their responses where used as input, driving the discussion in a short, one-to-one interview section with the facilitator. The artist was asked to fill in the questionnaire as well, but a rather different interview technique was employed. The artist was interviewed several days after the playtesting session, enabling him to reflect on his experience, and then discuss it in detail, examining its affordances, requirements, and potential future directions. The interview was audio-record and we report several parts of the (translated) transcripts in the following.

3 User Study Findings and Discussion

In this section we report a series of findings, presenting them with respect to the two main objectives of the user study. First we examine key issues related the artist’s participation in the game experience, which is the primary objective of the study, discussing the visitors’ perspective first, and elaborating on the artist’s viewpoint in the following. Then we summarize results related to the introduction of two new game components, reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses.

3.1 The Artist as a Player in the Group Game

The Visitors’ Perspective

Based on our playtesting sessions so far, the participants’ approaches to story making vary a lot. This result is also reflected in the current study (Table 3 depicts the stories that were created by the participants over the 2 game rounds). Some stories have structure (beginning, middle and closure), narrating personal feelings or fictional experiences. Several stories take the form of short titles or statements, which are either generic, humoristic, emotional, or referencing particular items in the paintings (or persons related to them, such as painters or musicians). So the main questions that we set with regard to the visitors’ perspective towards the artist’s participation are: Did the participants want to share the stories with the creator of the artworks? Did they experience discomfort or unease while doing so? And finally, did the participation of the artist add value to their experience and in what ways?

Table 3. Participant generated stories
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When the facilitator announced that the artist would next join the group to play along, the group members seemed to be surprised, and Participant #4 commented aloud: “Thank God he was not here before to listen to my story!”. It was the only story in the first round that nobody found the artwork behind it, so the rest of the group members considered it as a humoristic comment and laughed.

However, as described in the previous section, when the artist arrived at the coffee shop he initiated a group discussion about the participants’ prior game experience and, during the discussion, one participant proposed to share the stories with the artist and see if he would be able to find the artwork they were referring to. All participants enthusiastically welcomed the idea, except from Participant 4, who remained silent. However, he did not raise any objections and went along with it.

The rest of the group members started a discussion about whether a score should be computed for the artist as well, based on the rest of the answers (depicted on the notebook). One participant commented that it would be “unfair” for the artist, since he would not have the opportunity to get the Speeding Bonus, as they did. Despite that, the group finally decided to keep scoring, by adding the artist’s name initial at the bottom row of the scoring table (Fig. 2), and updating his score during the episodes.

We stress out that this process was not planned, or even anticipated, in the study design phase. Since it relates to one of the main research questions of the study, the facilitator did not intervene, and allowed the group to go-on with this, although significantly diverging from the original time plan. The group members’ initiative and eagerness to “repeat” the game with the artist offers valuable insights, demonstrating the participants’ strong willingness to share their stories and interact with the creator of the artworks. The group had been informed that a new round with the artist was planned to take place right away, yet that was not enough: they also wanted to share with him their past stories.

In the interview section, the participants were asked if they felt discomfort or unease while sharing their stories and reflections with the artist, and everybody replied negatively. Participant #4 reported that he was reluctant to do so at first, being afraid that his story would potentially upset or offend the artist’s work. However, since he was the 4th player to reveal his story, by the time his turn came he had observed that the artist was very friendly and had welcomed the stories and remarks made by the other participants, so his concerns had been reduced. The participant pointed out that he would probably have felt discomfort if he was the starting player (i.e. the first one sharing his story).

All the participants considered that the artist’s involvement significantly enriched their gameful visit. “Amazing experience having the artist and the curator as part of the team. Loved the fact that I was a member of a relatively small group that enjoyed talking and listening as well.” noted Participant #3 in the open comments section of the questionnaire. Discussing with the participants why they valued the artist’s participation (in the interview section), we observe that two main reasons were repeatedly brought up. First, some participants valued a lot the “authority” that the artist, as well as the exhibition designer, bring into the gameful visiting experience, reporting a general strong interest into the experts’ insights and interpretations. Second, the discussions that took place during the game were inspired by the artist’s work, but covered a wide variety of aspects, ranging from historical facts to music preferences or personal experiences and beliefs. This aspect was particularly appreciated by some participants. “I feel I met the person, not only the artist”, said one participant, emphasizing the social dimension of the experience.

The Artist’s Perspective

Similarly to the visitors’ side, the main questions that we set with regard to the artist’s viewpoint are: Did the artist enjoy listening to the stories and explanations made by the participants and why? Did he experience discomfort or unease at any point? And, focusing on his special role in the process, did his participation in the game foster his interaction with the participants, and in what ways?

With regard to the last question, we expected that, although the artist did not have a special role in the game-play, he would behave differently than the rest of the participants. Our hypothesis was that the artist would often take the initiative to lead the discussions, revealing his personal thoughts, intentions, or knowledge with regard to the referenced artworks. However our hypothesis was rejected. The artist overall behaved similarly to the other players; he provided explanations only in a few occasions, under the explicit request of the group members. In light of this observation, this issue was brought up during the interview section, discussing the artist’s reflections over his role in the game process.

At the beginning of the interview, the artist was asked to make an overall assessment of his game experience through two rather general questions (“What do you think about it? Did you like the game?”). The artist replied very positively, characterizing the game as very nice, clever and entertaining. He commented that he has talked to a lot of people about it, as something that he really enjoyed to be part of. Moving on, his first remark was: “I discovered a lot of things in my artworks that I had them for granted but I discovered them on a second level, on a second basis, and I better understood how others may see and perceive them, which I really enjoyed, as a process.” This comment relates to our first, as well as to the third research questions, and the artist was asked to give a related example from the playtesting session.

The artist commented that this happened in several occasions, but the most prominent example was the one where he was the Storyteller. His story was “20 bitter juices” (see all player stories in Table 3) and the artist explained: “To me, it was extremely evident that there were 20 buckets in one artwork, which were full of tears, as described at the lyrics of the song. But people do not pay attention to every detail of my artworks, nor do they read the lyrics of all the songs. So what I considered to be obvious made the participants look closer to the artworks, searching for particular things. This is a clever process and I was really happy to see that they all engaged in it. Also, I was glad to find out that the story was not as evident as I thought, since not everybody found the artwork, which shows that everything is relative, and what I have in my mind as an artist, or viewer, may be perceived and discovered in rather different and personal ways (Fig. 3).”

Fig. 3.
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Snapshot from playtesting with the artist: one participant reveals his personal thoughts, pointing to particular elements of the artwork

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Then the artist was asked if he felt the need to intervene while listening to the group’s reflections and reasoning over his artworks, in order to share his personal thoughts about them. The artist replied negatively, explaining that he preferred not to take the lead at all. “I really enjoyed that they were all saying stories and comments about my artworks, that they found several elements and details in them. Even if some were wrong, I did not want to correct anyone or say something more about it.” The artist referenced a concrete example where one of the participants mentioned an octopus in his story, later explaining that he saw the tentacles’ of an octopus in the painting: “I loved that! I did not want to say -no, that’s not tentacles. I did so only because someone asked me”.

When questioned if his participation in the game fostered his interaction with the participants, the artist replied very positively and explained: “Through the game I met some people that I did not know at all, and we immediately found common references, reasons and topics to discuss, which would probably not happen without the game context. It brings you closer to the others, and I think that I am not saying this only because I was the artist. If someone else was the artist, I think I’d play the same game and get to meet the group with the same enthusiasm, talking about his/her artworks.” So we conclude that the artist clearly preferred to take on a traditional player role in the game, paying high attention to the participants’ discussions and remarks, and appreciating the social dimension of the game experience.

With regard to our second research question, the artist reported that he did not feel uncomfortable within the group discussions. He was asked if he is concerned that his work may be undermined by the stories that may be potentially crafted, since there is no control or limitation to what the players may actually say. The artist replied negatively: “I think that my artworks are an entity of their own, they will not be affected or altered by a different explanation”.

However, a different type of concern was revealed during the discussion, related to the context of the game experience and, in particular, to the co-existence of visitors who do not participate in the game. “At some point, there were 2 visitors in the gallery, who were not in the mood of what we were doing. We were running around, laughing, talking aloud, making nice comments, making the space our own. But them, they wanted to make their own tour, under different circumstances, to listen the music and see my artworks in a different way and pace.” Elaborating on this issue, the artist proposed that the gameful visit is conducted in the context of game events, booking the exhibition environment for particular timeslots, so that all visitors are informed and aware of the activity that will be taking place.

3.2 Assessment of Speeding and Guessing Bonuses

The Speeding Bonus was received in different ways by the participants. Participant 2 reported it as one of the strong points of the game (in the related open question), noting that “It puts you in a state of quick processing of the artworks”. In the interview section, the participant expressed his appreciation for quick pacing and competition, explaining that the Speeding Bonus strengthened these aspects in the overall game experience. On the contrary, Participant 4 mentioned it as a negative point, favoring the creative and intellectual challenges posed by the game over quick pacing: “It does not give the opportunity for in-depth analysis”, he noted. Conflicting visitor attitudes towards competition and pacing were also identified in our previous playtesting sessions [7], highlighting the challenge to balance between different personal preferences of the group members [10].

In addition, several comments and group discussions during the 1st playtesting session were related to the Speeding Bonus. The “quickest” voter often announced aloud “I am going for the Speeding Bonus”, leading to teases and jokes from the other participants. In one occasion, after the votes were revealed, one participant said “You aimed for the small prize and you lost the big one”, a tease that drove the group members into discussing whether targeting for the Speeding Bonus is a good game strategy or not.

Assessing its difficulty, the Speeding Bonus was effectively acquired twice in the first round (by different participants), which is a rather reasonable number for a group of 5, and four times in the second round. However, during the second round it quickly became evident that the artist had a way quicker voting pace than the rest of the group members. In two cases he voted instantly (i.e. in less than 5 s), and he was the first one to vote most of the times (3 out of 5), acquiring the Speeding Bonus twice. The group members complained that it was unfair to compete against the artist in speeding terms, realizing his strong advantage in recalling and examining the artworks.

Moving on to the Guessing Bonus, we observed that it was never acquired over the two rounds, so we conclude that the task set was too difficult. Following an iterative design approach, we plan to ease and also speed up the guessing task, by asking the Storyteller to “bet” on (only) one of the participants, instead of requiring to find them all. Based on the game transcripts, we expect that the proposed adaptation will be neither too easy to accomplish, nor too difficult.

4 Conclusions and Future Work

In this paper we present our approach to foster the communication between groups of visitors and art creators through their joint participation in a social storytelling game. We describe a user study that includes two playtesting sessions in the physical environment of a fine arts exhibition: one without the artist, and one where the artist participates as a player in the game. We report key results with regard to the social interactions that were developed through this process, examining both the visitors’ and the artist’s perspective, using a combination of behavioral and attitudinal data. Our results show an exciting potential to create a new channel of communication between artists and visitors, through their joint game participation.

Moving towards this direction, the user study results offer several insights on how to proceed with the mobile game design and implementation. We plan to extend the original game design by introducing a new player attribute, discriminating between visitors and artists. The same game functionality will be provided to all players, however the artists’ attribute will be exploited for scoring purposes (i.e. excluding the Artist from participating in the Speeding bonus), plus it will be reflected in the mobile interface design.

In our future work we plan to invite more artists in this process, aiming to capture a variety of different perspectives from the artists’ side, and observe how these shape the game experience. We will further investigate the different roles that the artists may take, besides playing the game similarly to ordinary players. Following a participatory design approach, we will form a group of interested artists who will collaboratively consider all the stages of the experience, from design to delivery, as well as post-play analysis. For instance, during the interview section, the artist expressed his interest in viewing the visitor generated stories afterwards, thus posing the requirement for data collection and visualization tools that leverage the game usage data.

The use of game designs and technologies for advancing social interactions, not only between groups of visitors but also between visitors and artists, is a young and exciting field. We believe that work in this direction may have a high social impact, shaping new forms of cultural participation.