Of BATs and APEs: An interactive tabletop game for natural history museums

Michael S. Horn, Zeina Atrash Leong, Florian Block, Judy Diamond, E. Margaret Evans, Brenda Phillips, Chia Shen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

79 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper we describe visitor interaction with an interactive tabletop exhibit on evolution that we designed for use in natural history museums. We video recorded 30 families using the exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. We also observed an additional 50 social groups interacting with the exhibit without video recording. The goal of this research is to explore ways to develop "successful" interactive tabletop exhibits for museums. To determine criteria for success in this context, we borrow the concept of Active Prolonged Engagement (APE) from the science museum literature. Research on APE sets a high standard for visitor engagement and learning, and it offers a number of useful concepts and measures for research on interactive surfaces in the wild. In this paper we adapt and expand on these measures and apply them to our tabletop exhibit. Our results show that visitor groups collaborated effectively and engaged in focused, on-topic discussion for prolonged periods of time. To understand these results, we analyze visitor conversation at the exhibit. Our analysis suggests that social practices of game play contributed substantially to visitor collaboration and engagement with the exhibit.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationConference Proceedings - The 30th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2012
Pages2059-2068
Number of pages10
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event30th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2012 - Austin, TX, United States
Duration: May 5 2012May 10 2012

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference30th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAustin, TX
Period5/5/125/10/12

Keywords

  • Design
  • Evolution
  • Games
  • Interactive surfaces
  • Learning
  • Multi-touch tabletops
  • Museums

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

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