THE GUIDANCE SYSTEM OF GAMIFICATION AND AUGMENTED

REALITY IN A MUSEUM SPACE

ZI-RU CHEN
1
Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology
1
zrchen@stust.edu.tw

Abstract. Gamification is the application of game-oriented

design approaches or game-inspired mechanics to otherwise non-game
contexts. Mobile guiding system is the design process of information
interactions. It is the integration of information design, interaction
design, and sensorial design. The e-learning system of mobile guide
is able to be loaded gamification concepts and let mobile learning
interestingly, diversely, and validly. The problem of the research was
if we combined the concept of gamification design into museum guide
services with augmented reality for non-commercial purposes, it also
provided the same benefits to the promotion of museum learning and
knowledge, integrating mobile devices as navigation media. It would
improve more users to participate in a museum and use the guide system
actively, and then arise their interest and achievement. The result was
to establish a preliminary model for developing a museum mobile guide
system of gamification design and augmented reality.

Keywords. Gamification; Museum Learning; Multimedia Guided

System; Augmented Reality.

1. Introduction
1.1. MUSEUM GUIDE AND GAMIFICATION
Nowadays, museums play the role of social education. It has a wealth of
collections and related materials, and stimulates and encourages people to learn
through educational programs, exhibitions, activities, etc. (Hooper-Greenhill,
1999) Lord et al. (1997) believed that informal education is the most successful in
affective learning, which can change audience’s attitude and interest, audience’s
use of guide, and affect their visiting experience and willingness to come again.
Guide is frequently used by visitors in museums. Many museums and researchers
like to explore what kind of guide method can improve learning motivation and
effectiveness of visitors. In terms of guide device, currently, digital guide of
personalized mobile is widely used. Such mobile guide can display multimedia,
wireless communication and database technology with mobile device, and replace
traditional printed material and guide manual (Yu, 2003). The mobile device
is characterized by high portability and powerful computer functions. When
combined with the easy-to-use mobile guide, it may interact with the display

RE: Anthropocene, Proceedings of the 25th International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided
Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) 2020, Volume 1, 671-680. © 2020 and published by the
Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA), Hong Kong.
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content, allowing visitors to select their favorite exhibits at any time and at any
place, and meeting different needs for experience activities.
In addition, previous research was pointed out that games can make people
happy, make complicated things simple, and also change human behavior. Games
can not only be used for entertainment or learning, but to change people’s living
habits, business behaviors, political and social activities, etc. Therefore, the
design concept and application of “gamification” have received wide attention in
recent years. The word “gamification” is generally defined as applying elements
such as game thinking, game mechanism and design structure to non-game social
activities and services (Deterding et al., 2011). Gamification is a phenomenon.
Determining et al. (2011) explained that gamification is the use of game elements
to perform certain activities with specific purposes in non-game situations. In
2015, New Media Consortium put forward some examples of gamification
applied to museums, and believed that this trend could enhance visitors‘ viewing
experience. It also pointed out that how to enhance the creative experience
process is a major challenge for such guide design in the future (Johnson et al.,
2015). The game system can stimulate users’ emotions, promote better feeling and
connection between people and technology interfaces (Roy et al., 2009). Besides,
the integrated use of interactive technology and interactive design also involves
the management of aesthetic experience (Locher et al., 2010).

1.2. AUGMENTED REALITY APPLIED IN GUIDE SERVICE

In recent years, the development of augmented reality technology has become
mature and has begun to be applied in many different fields. There are increasing
cases of introducing augmented reality application into museum guide experience.
Such audience integration and immersion experience are different from the
traditional display mode. They bring visitors sense of novelty and participation,
and often become the highlight in the exhibition. Augmented reality may
combine virtual and real worlds, and enable visitors to be in a three-dimensional
environment to engage in real-time interaction with objects that cannot actually be
brought to the exhibition environment, cannot be touched by visitors and must be
enlarged. Such practice prolongs visitors‘ stay in front of exhibits, and connects
knowledge the museum wants to convey with visitors’ own experience (Guo,
2008). It is considered to serve as a communication medium between the museum
and visitors (Hammady et al., 2016). The augmented reality in guide services uses
image card identification and projection display to achieve the learning experience
of integrated virtual and real scenes, adopts outdoor geographic information to
achieve the purpose of action learning, and employs simple augmented reality
tools to search virtual objects so as to innovate artistic display forms (Veenhof &
Skwarek, 2010). Undoubtedly, the application of augmented reality in museums
is of various possibilities and multiple creative expression potential, thereby
triggering a range of studies on the application of augmented reality in museum
guide experience, exhibition quality and learning results.
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2. Problem and objective

In recent years, museum education has gained vigorous development. In light
of the shortcomings in guide design in most museums, this study found that
museum guides are mostly printed in writing, and multimedia video broadcasting
and personnel on-the-spot interpretation and other ways are provided to convey
exhibit information. However, most of the exhibits in the museum are of
rich historical significance and profound knowledge background. If a museum
provides different guide services and information content for different visitors, it
will impose an excessive burden on manpower and material costs. In addition,
traditional guide method can by no means achieve the best presentation and
explanation effect for in-depth and detailed expertise of each exhibit. Also,
professional but important exhibit information is often hard to understand, thereby
depriving visitors of the motivations for further information, and preventing them
from understanding the connotation of important cultural relics. Therefore, this
study took the “Wood-frame Construction of Eastern Architecture Exhibition” of
Ancient Machinery Research Center in Southern Taiwan University of Science
and Technology as an example (refer to Figure 1.) to explore new possibility
of museum guide planning and design through game-based design thinking and
expanded reality application, and guide the public to re-recognize the museum
learning mode.

Figure 1. The interior of “wood-frame construction of eastern architecture exhibition”.

3. Methodology and Steps

This study adopted case study, prototyping and user testing methods. Through case
analysis, this study obtained the game elements, and made the prototype based on
guide content planning, game elements and rules, system interface design, and
prototyping of game guide system. Finally, the user testing was carried out to
confirm feasibility of the prototype and explore the learning effect of application
of game and augmented reality in museum guide.

3.1. CASE STUDIES: TO BUILD THE MODE AND FACTORS OF

GAMIFICATION
Through the analysis of 5 gamification cases, this study took 6 game
elements proposed by Zichermann and Linder (2013), including points, levels,
trophies/badges/achievements, virtual goods, leaderboards and virtual gifts as the
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analysis basis to extract elements that attract people in the game, and analysed the
game-based design of the cases. The analysis results are applied to museum guide
to propose design specifications or criteria of the game-based action application
program. Please refer to Table 1 for the analysis framework.

Table 1. The analysis framework of gamification factors.

3.2. PROTOTYPE IMPLEMENTATION: TO DESIGN A GUIDE SYSTEM

3.2.1. exhibition themes selection
Above figure 1 shows the interior of “Wood-frame Construction of Eastern
Architecture Exhibition”. There are various exhibits and display plans in the
exhibition hall. In this study, 8 main exhibition themes were sorted out and used as
exhibition contents of subsequent game-based guide plan. Please refer to graphical
representation in Figure 2 and description in Table 2 for 8 exhibition themes and
the guide plan.

Figure 2. The display objects of eight main exhibition themes.

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Table 2. The description framework of eight main exhibition themes.

3.2.2. USER INTERFACE AND FLOW DESIGN

According to the result of game elements and rules from case studies, the interface
flow and usability design were carried out to plan. Refer to Figure 3 for part of
the interface design. In terms of usability process design, as the museum guide
discussed in this study focused on the interaction between visitors and exhibits, the
”augmented reality” technology was adopted to achieve virtual-real integration.
The guide experience was divided into ”virtual scenes” and ”real scenes”. ”Virtual
scenes” refer to the guide information and game interactive content of exhibits
provided in the application program, while ”real scenes” refer to the contents of
exhibits in the physical environment. The whole experience of guide/game was
carried out simultaneously/alternately between virtual scenes and real scenes, so
as to reach ”creating innovative museum guide design and achieve ”gamifying
museum guide experience” proposed by this study, as seen in Figure 4.
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Figure 3. The App and AR interface of museum guide prototype.

Figure 4. User interface flow of the museum guide.

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3.2.3. Prototype system implementation

The system software in this study was developed by using a game engine,
Unity. Unity is a cross-platform game development engine, with a hierarchical,
comprehensive development environment, including visual editing, detailed
attribute editor and dynamic game preview functions. It is also used to make
games or develop game prototypes. Thus, it meets the needs of this study. The
version adopted in this research is Unity 2018.2. 5f1. In addition, in the application
of augmented reality technology, the Vuforia development kit was employed.
Vuforia is a platform to assist in augmented reality technology. Producers can
use its advanced computer vision to perform train on images. Currently, Vuforia
has been integrated with the game development engine Unity.
As for the selection of hardware devices for guide, the technology of
augmented reality can be applied to mobile devices such as smartphones or smart
glasses. Considering of making more people get involved, smartphones are chosen
as the platform for development. Finally, after the system is built, it is tested and
used in the exhibition hall of “Wood-frame Construction of Eastern Architecture
Exhibition” of Ancient Machinery Research Center, Southern Taiwan University
of Science and Technology to ensure smooth implementation of the system, as
shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. User testing of museum guide system in the exhibition.

4. User testing
4.1. PARTICIPANT BACKGROUND
This study intended to explore whether the mobile application featuring
gamification design and augmented reality technology in museum guide is helpful
to the learning results of audience. It tested the feasibility of guide system and
observed testers’ system usage behavior. The total number of samples is 40, all
of whom are college students aged 18 to 30 (15 males and 25 females). They
were familiar with the user interface design and process in the mobile application
program, but did not know the relevant knowledge of wooden buildings. The
study hoped to know whether the subjects can successfully complete the exhibition
experience through the guide App developed in this study.
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4.2. THE ANALYSIS OF SYSTEM USAGE BEHAVIOR

4.2.1. Visiting time of each exhibit
The test results show that the average visiting time is 27 minutes 4 seconds. For
the visiting time of 8 exhibits, please refer to Table 3. The average visiting time
of 5 exhibits is about 3 minutes, namely “Moving Track”, “Dougong Group”,
“Calibration Instrument”, “Song Dynasty Costume” and “Timing Tower”. Among
all the exhibits, the one with the shortest visiting time is “Timeline Wall”. Most
of the subjects passed through the game checkpoint of the exhibit in a very short
time. The game was simple for most of the subjects, but some subjects deemed
that there were too many words in this guide interface and they may sometimes
ignore the important information.
The one with the most visiting time is No. 6. When visiting the exhibits of
“Dougong Instruction”, as the game design was interaction between hands-on
and exhibits, the subjects need to assemble the scattered Dougong components
by observing the Dougong structure. Thus, they spent much time on this exhibit.
Most subjects believed that such guide method was the most interesting, and they
can understand the Dougong structure through the hands-on assembly process.
Table 3. The survey of visiting time of 8 exhibits.

4.2.2. game rule and achieving level

Each exhibit task in the guide system is a level. Subjects may obtain one key and
up to 100 points when they beat a level, and 10 points will be deducted if they fail.
If a subject beats a game task at the first time, he may get a golden key, and get a
silver key when he didn’t beat the task at the first time. Only one of the two keys
can be obtained at each level. According to the experimental results, as shown
in Table 4, only 5 subjects beat the level of No. 5 exhibit task. Many subjects
pointed out the detection problem of image recognition resulted in the low passing
rate. The final level is “Timing Tower”, which collect 7 keys to beat the level.
There were only 5 subjects beat all of the levels. It can be known that the mobile
guide application developed based on the gamification and augmented reality is
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not easy for most subjects to master the system and game tasks in a short time (in
about 30 minutes).

Table 4. The results of achieving levels of 40 subjects.

4.3. THE RESULTS OF USER TESTING

According to the user tests, the study sorted out 3 major discussions, including
suggestions on the application of augmented reality in guide system, suggestions
on the application of gamification in the interface of augmented reality guide
system, and suggestions on the design of game content. The explanations are as
follows:
In terms of application of augmented reality to the guide system, it was difficult
for subjects to eliminate problems encountered in the testing by themselves, and
researchers were required to assist in handling such problems. It was suggested
that the guide map of the system should display the number of detecting points on
each exhibit, or added photos or illustrations of detected results to the guide system,
which can reduce the detecting problems encountered by users during guide.
In terms of application of gamification to the interface of the augmented reality
guide system, the experimental results showed that as subjects needed to use smart
mobile phones for testing, they should be focused on both the mobile phones and
the exhibits, and failed to carefully read the text introduction on the guide system.
It was suggested that the text be presented in the form of voice or animation, which
would make it easier for visitors to get involved in the situation when experiencing
the exhibition.
In terms of game content design, the subjects preferred the game content
with high feedback, such as the game level design of “Dougong Instruction”
and “Song Dynasty Costume”. The interactive modes of hands-on operation and
pairing make subjects felt fun in the guide process. Subjects pointed out that the
question-and-answer mode and the way of finding components were boring. It
was suggested that the user-friendly interactive mode with high feedback should
be provided, so that visitors can have a good interactive experience when visiting
the exhibition.
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5. Conclusion
This study hoped to adopted prototyping to develop a guide application program
that applies gamification concepts and augmented reality, and to obtain a
preliminary design model of gamification for museum guide. Then, this study
validated the feasibility of such model through user tests, and the display medium
is an interface of mobile device. The preliminary result shows that the application
of gamification in museum guide can extend the time of visiting exhibitions in a
museum, and has significant effects on museum learning through questionnaires
and interviews. It can be seen that gamification has a positive impact on the
application of museum guide, and the related research may also be carried out
in an in-depth manner.

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