Bluetooth LE was designed as a low energy IoT platform to enable an invisible and unobtrusive way of digitally interacting with physical objects. In this project, we sought to explore its potential by designing, developing and deploying a prototype mobile location-based game across several museum exhibitions, and by subsequently evaluating it with members of the public.
Objectives
This work formed the centerpiece of my master’s degree project. Working in collaboration with the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and the Cambridge Museums consortium, I designed and developed a location-based game for museum exploration based around a network of Bluetooth LE beacons. The goal was to test the viability of this novel (at the time of the project) technology in the unique context of public museum exhibitions.
What I did
I was responsible for the whole lifecycle, including conceptual design, production of the actual application (programming, visuals and animations) as well as carrying out usability evaluations. The project was supervised by Professors Alan Blackwell and Andreas Lund. Professor Robert Harle kindly provided me with a set of Bluetooth LE beacons, allowing me to bring my game alive.
Workflow
The core gameplay concept involved users being contacted via their smartphones by virtual ghost characters representing various artifacts as they navigated through an exhibition. These characters would prompt users to locate the corresponding physical artifacts within the museum space and answer associated quiz questions.
To achieve this, we deployed multiple Bluetooth beacons throughout the exhibition environment. The idea was for the smartphone app to determine the user’s approximate location based on the strength of the beacon signals. However, in practice, this proved relatively challenging. Even minor changes in the user’s orientation, such as turning away from a beacon, caused a significant drop in signal strength. This prompted us to carefully reconsider the placement of the beacons and the design of the app (for more details on this, please see our research papers listed at the end of this post).
The ghost characters on user’s smartphones were animated to constantly provide relevant feedback, such as whether the user was moving in the right or wrong direction.
The game eventually evolved into a ‘treasure hunt’ experience spanning four different museums. Over a dozen members of the public were recruited to help evaluate it, and it was met with positive feedback overall. This study helped demonstrate some of the creative possibilities enabled by emerging mobile technologies within museum settings.
A more detailed description of this project and our findings can be found in the following publications:
Applying Seamful Design in Location-based Mobile Museum Applications
Ghosts! a location-based Bluetooth LE mobile game for museum exploration
