In a one-off industry such as traditional advertising, however, user impressions are perceived to trump user experience. Did someone see your product? Are they thinking about it? Has it entered their consciousness even before entering their household? The success of old-school advertising is quantified only in terms of purchases made, regardless of means. “Did they buy?”

The dairy industry knows a lot about the old model of advertising. Get some celebrity spokespeople to testify on behalf of milk, make sure that relativity of benefits to calcium amount is in fine print, dance around the issue of whether milk is responsible for early puberty trends, and get consumers to come back for round two. The California Milk Processing Board’s new campaign, however, is an example of what’s problematic about advertisers’ current respect for consumers, our respect for ourselves, and our respect for each other:

The campaign takes the cheeky tack of addressing itself to the men in women’s lives, on the grounds that women are not the only ones affected by premenstrual syndrome. [The campaign describes how studies have shown that the calcium in dairy milk can help reduce the symptoms of PMS.]

The approach is underlined by the centerpiece of the campaign, a microsite, or special Web site, that is ostensibly in the voice of a man whose wife or girlfriend is in the throes of PMS: “Everything I do is wrong.” (NYT)

The useless notion that a woman’s natural menstrual cycle must universally emasculate men is disappointing. However, as much of an issue here is partner Goodby’s response to whether disrespecting customers is a problem:

The idea, says Jeff Goodby…is to “enlist the spouse or significant other” of women to encourage them to drink milk.

“We did it in the past, but the women just didn’t drink enough milk,” he says, laughing. “If they’d only drink enough, we wouldn’t come back.”

Mr. Goodby was reminded of some criticism six years ago of the “Milk to the Rescue” commercial as sexist.

“I wish I could say everybody’s got a sense of humor since then,” he says.

The subject is “for many people an uneasy one to bring up, not fit for public discussion,” he adds. “When I tell female friends and relatives we’re doing a campaign on this, they go, ‘Uh, uh, are you sure?’ ”

But “my own small focus group has endorsed it,” Mr. Goodby says. “They’ve seen the work and they say it’s funny.” (NYT)

Maybe we can’t fix that Goodby is undervaluing the reactions and purchasing power of women, engaging gendered insecurities, and still subscribing to illusions about focus group significance. What we can fix, though, are our expectations of what we deserve from our advertisers (respect), what we deserve from our products (value), and what “user experience” we’re buying when we use a product or service.

For example, when I choose WePay over PayPal, I’m doing it because I like feeling like a valued customer who is worth working with. Their customer service is phenomenal, their philosophy compassionate, and I like how I feel when I use their services. In the case of choosing what kind of food¹ to buy, wouldn’t you rather choose the product which at least doesn’t suggest you should feel unreasonable or emasculated?

I encourage all consumers, producers, and people to respect themselves enough to demand good experiences from the products that they create and use, starting with the kind of advertising and marketing that they will accept. At the end of the day, the best products will win, in software and in food products. Where we can, let’s call out disrespect where we see it and acknowledge that it’s not irrelevant to consumer experience. Simply put, it makes a product worse.

On July 22, a week and a half after this article was posted, the advertising campaign in question was withdrawn after a social media firestorm.

1: Consider coconut, soy, or almond milk substitutes: more likely to be absent dangerous hormones, these also have the benefit of not exploiting gendered insecurities! Score! Also, try calcium substitutes to get its benefits, without the excess calories.

Viewing the world through a phone or similar block of metal will always be undesirable, even though phones are useful platforms to research such AR applications. Instead, our phones’ motley sensors must be intelligently paired with our surroundings, redirecting our attention to the world via intelligent, structured distractions. After all, a phone is but one artifact in an incredibly high-fidelity environment, and to immerse oneself in a phone rather than a physical system is an easily acquired yet unoptimized imbalance. Our model of how we sense the world, how computers sense the world, and how the digital relates to the physical is in urgent need of redefinition.

Although just a start, some location-based services certainly enrich our relationships with the physical. However, using the digital to add some details and (often) intangible rewards to the physical world isn’t the same as really changing how people look at their environments and their possibilities. Foursquare and brightkite, in casual use, realistically do little to encourage people to go outside their comfort zones and instead allow the majority of people to extend their comfort zones. Nonexclusive and with an allowance for people to be passive in their own physical and digital worlds, these applications simply add or glorify extant details of everyday experiences.

Without alienating users and while still creating a successful user acquisition strategy, the next step is to design mobile experiences that better celebrate the unexpected. Let’s move forward from patting users on the back when the press a “check-in” button at their regular bar. Let’s not establish user loyalty by only exploiting insecurities and extant social maps.

The most pervasive and sustainable location based service, and social service in general, is yet to come. When designers and developers update their model of the real world and where sensing technologies may uniquely enrich it – not replace it or immaterially overlay it – we’ll know we’re on the right path.

Some challenges did present themselves as I debugged iPhone the application, particularly when trying to find a method to read from a file hosted remotely and to retrieve an image’s path on the iPhone. While that was resolved after two days of hunting the internet (as detailed in the previous post), there currently remains a challenge when working with the UIPageControl. To make the UIPageControl work I had used some sample code from Apple’s developer resources, but unfortunately this didn’t play nicely with the method I devised to populate the Response screens with information from the JSON file. Although I effectively developed a system for updating to and retrieving from the JSON file into a NSArray, for some reason “flipping” through the dynamically generated pages caused the application to crash. Because the array is successfully populating and the UIPageControl works with any data not being retrieved from an array, repairing this issue will take additional time. Additionally, attempting to repair this took priority over debugging the PHP script which is meant to upload an image object, and although I have the Objective-C in place I know I need to go back and refine the PHP uploader method in order for it to be scalable. As such, these are two weaknesses to the application which I intend to repair given more time.

Also, there were challenges arising from how we populated the Surface’s ScatterView with Artwork ScatterViewItems, as it was difficult to communicate the location of tokens to the ScatterViewItems on the screen, necessary for the full effectiveness of our saving and deleting functions. We also lacked time to play with the retrieval of responses, and in the future might like to work on randomizing them while also importing more images.

Happily, the current weaknesses of both applications are not terminal, but simply could not be resolved in the four weeks we had to develop the aesthetic and functional prototypes on the Surface and the iPhone. As I intend to work with Dr. Orit Shaer and Jim Olson of the Davis Museum to test and refine these applications in the museum setting next semester, this is only the beginning of a project I am very excited about bringing to the Davis Museum. An additional feature I plan to bring to the application is the ability to read 2D codes using the iPhone’s camera, so that users can scan a code rather than type one in when unlocking responses. I plan to use the zxing image processing library with its iPhone module to do so, and I believe this will add a fun and enticing element to using the application. Additionally, I intend to write a PHP script to convert an XML file hosted on the server to a JSON file, as Jim and the museum curators are already storing information about the artworks in XML files. In so doing, I can avoid the hassle of working with the NSXML methods and continue to take advantage of the JSON framework, without inconveniencing the museum staff.

What makes these features immersive rather than interruptive is their implication in Okami’s greater gameplay metaphor of omnipotence. This metaphor mediates the “gap between gameworld and player or…gap between player and avatar” [2] in order to “help at least approximate or “fake”…experiences,” [2] such as the experience of being divine. As described in their paper “Games about LOVE and TRUST? Harnessing the Power of Metaphors for Experience Design,” Doris Rusch and Matthew Weise point out that dealing with this gap “creatively” can bring the player incredibly close to “stepping into the shoes of the hero [and] into the body of a completely different species.” [2] The player-avatar relationship, aesthetic schema, and Celestial Brush interface metaphor in Okamiact in concert to navigate this gap, and create an immersive experience in being omnipotent.

While all videogame players commonly experience some feeling of omnipotence during gameplay, Okami uses the physical concept of omnipotence to create an immersive experiential gestalt. Because the player’s avatar appears on the screen across from her, is not a literal representation of her, and acts based on discrete input from a library of possible interactions, there is a necessary physical disconnect between the player and the avatar she controls. [2] This type of indirect control, however, is comparable to the type of power an omnipotent being is commonly assumed to have and be able to exert. Because the main character is characterized as such a being, the player is more able to identify with Amaterasu and see her indirect manipulation of the wolf as being meaningful to the game’s spiritual narrative. Furthermore, this “provide[s the player with] a perspective about how things are and feel like” [2] beyond her basic control of the white wolf, so that common gameplay mechanisms and unique interactions serve as further immersive tools.

One exemplary way in which Okami reinforces the player’s immersion in the character Amaterasu is in the depiction of dialogue between Amaterasu and other celestial beings. When celestial characters are addressing Amaterasu, they invariably occupy the center of the screen and appear to address the player directly, rather than Amaterasu’s avatar (which isn’t even visible on screen). However, when the character “gives” a brush technique to Amaterasu, the object representing it symbolically transfers to and is imprinted upon the wolf’s chest. This creates a deliberate distinction between the player-god Amaterasu, who operates on an intellectual plane of control, and the avatar, who is solely a control for input and output in the physical realm. The gap between the player and the character Amaterasu is thereby mediated as the player experiences being addressed as Amaterasu herself, and her physical control over the avatar is conceptually mirrored in Amaterasu’s supposed omnipotence.

However, Torben Grodal points out that being so deeply immersed can “cause fatigue and eventually a sense of lack of control,” [3] as the player is still only an agent within a demanding game space. After all, the above example comes from a cut scene in which the player has little to no control. To give players more control over how they play the game without diverting from the conceptual framework, Okami describes common mechanics such as saving and battle avoidance in unique spiritual terms. Saving, a “player-generated process” [3], takes place only at shrines and is framed as a spiritual activity, where the player’s experiences are being recorded in the greater fabric of existence. Likewise, demon battles take place only upon contact with “demon scrolls,”  portals which allow a player to chose whether or not to engage in battles during the gameplay. Extending the concept of omnipotence to such basic processes as saving and battle-avoidance allows the player to remain immersed in this spiritual framework while exercising her own agency as a player.

Just as the concept of omnipotence uniquely explains the gap between player and avatar as part of an immersive experience, Okami’s sumi-e aesthetic uses the gap as “part of [its] toolset” [4] to create a cohesive spiritual framework. The sumi-e style of brush painting is intimately and historically connected to the depiction of Japanese mythology, and the cel-shading of Okami is deliberately a closely correlative graphic style. While “realistic” graphics are integral to sports games, this is mainly because their game worlds must correlate in graphical quality and perspective to the television coverage people are accustomed to – a different visual problem than that faced in Okami. [5] Even to those unacquainted with the historical conveyance of Japanese mythology, the vivid and organic sumi-e graphics create an “environmental spectacle that evokes myth, magic and mystery,” said by Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska to be “particularly important to games set in high-fantasy locations.” [5] This creative visual language is distinct from the physical world’s, taking advantage of the gap between player and television screen in order to immerse her in a moving, interactive painting.

One particular virtue of depicting the game world as an interactive painting is that it allows the visual elements to tell a story of their own. Like a painting immerses the viewer through symbolism, color and brushwork, “cinematic techniques shape style and tone and add connotative meaning…serv[ing] the additional function of communicating between game-system and player.” [6] Techniques such as the appearance of flowers growing at Amaterasu’s feet and the visible whirling of the wind are two of many aspects of Okami’s particular “richly imagined special world, full of enticing things,” [6] stated in “Emotional Game Design” to stimulate the player’s voyeuristic instinct and immerse her more emotionally in the gameplay. More literal communication between the interface’s art and the player is particularly exemplified by the use of symbols in the HUD to convey meaning unique to the game’s scope.

A specific example of meaningful symbolism comes in Okami’s unique depiction of health loss, a mechanic common to videogames but specifically framed by this game’s mythology. Artfully using the ubiquity of sun symbolism to reinforce the player’s impression of Amaterasu’s divinity, health is depicted in units of solar energy that relate to the strength of her presence in the body of the wolf. This allows the game-world-generated process of death to be explained as Amaterasu’s divine spirit fleeing the body of the wolf, rather than as a feature inconsistent with this experience of omnipotence. The ink pots in the HUD are a somewhat less direct reference to Amaterasu’s divinity, as they refer to her ability to power the Celestial Brush but attempt to remain consistent with the metaphor of the brush itself. To balance these metaphors, the vanishing of ink pots from the HUD is supplemented by the white wolf’s flaming weaponry vanishing from her body, so that the visuals completely convey that depleting the metaphorical ink supply has thereby depleted the avatar’s power supply. This visual redundancy helps further immerse the player in the gameworld, as it reinforces its metaphorical frameworks and immediately alerts her to her shifting ability to use the Celestial Brush.

Because of the gestural nature of Celestial Brush interactions on the Wii, its use allows for seamlessly parallel actions between the physical and the game world. While it initially seems like a stretch that gesturing with the Celestial Brush is relevant to the “world beyond the game,” [7] the brush techniques of the game are almost all exactly akin to the brush techniques of traditional Japanese art. Thereby learning how to execute the crude basics of Japanese brush painting, the player develops a connection to Okami’s artistry while onlookers can appreciate the gestures’ significance. The gestures can also be gratification of their own, as an exuberant gestural flourish can be a complete outlet for the player’s energy and spirit. These gestures are thereby linked meaningfully with Celestial Brush techniques, making the game an exception to concerns about trivial gesturing. [8] Should a technique fail, the player is bound to ask “was my artwork good enough?” rather than “did the control stick misread my input?”, signifying that extending the brush metaphor to its gestural input allows the player feelings of ownership and greater immersion in their role.

Learning how and when to gesturally perform these miracles is also critical to the player’s engagement with the game. In the earliest stages of Okami, the player has only a few brush techniques that she can use. In the words of Clint Hocking, this is the “number of elements implicated in the [Celestial Brush] pattern,” [9] which increases as the player learns more techniques. Integral to the gameplay is becoming comfortable with a growing library of miracles and learning their applications. The gameplay’s complexity also increases over time, as the player learns to apply the same brush techniques to a growing variety of tasks. Meanwhile, the Celestial Brush’s tolerance decreases over time, as defeating later enemies requires a higher mastery of the techniques. According to Clint Hocking, when these forces of implication, complexity and tolerance act “in concert…[they] immerse [the player’s] left brain in the game.” [9] Likewise, the Celestial Brush mechanic causes players to think like a god despite still working within the game’s constraints.

The immersive power of the Celestial Brush is exemplified by Amaterasu’s battle with the Spider Queen. Earlier in the Tsuta Ruins, Amaterasu acquires a “Vine” technique that causes an open Konohana blossom to shoot vines to Amaterasu or a hook in the earth. With two such patterns of use, there is some complexity to how and when the technique should be applied. As the player recognizes Konohana blossoms surrounding the Queen mid-battle, she knows that she should implicate the “Vine” technique, but how? Because there isn’t much time between the Queen’s attacks, there is a low tolerance for applying the technique incorrectly. However, when the player notices the hooks on the Queen’s back it calls to the pattern of painting vines to hooks in the ground. As the player becomes aware of what she has to do, any errors are likely on account of inaccurate painting, a mistake the player can directly learn from as she rapidly seeks to improve. Indeed, recursing the brush technique on the Queen’s back hooks will temporarily stun her, and allow the player to go in for the kill, gesturally slicing at her innards to implicate the Power Slash technique. Forced to think quickly in terms of the Celestial Brush’s powers and patterns, the player experiences both a physical and mental immersion in Amaterasu’s abilities and responsibilities.

Because of the creative use of gameplay metaphors and abstraction in Okami’s game world, the player experiences an exceptional connection with its conditions. Amaterasu’s relationship to the white wolf successfully parallels the player-character relationship in gameplay, mediating its gap and causing the player to uniquely identify with Amaterasu. Because the goal of sumi-e is to capture the essence of an idea, and not to replicate it, the sumi-e aesthetic of the game is a purposeful abstraction that creates a library of immersive gameplay metaphors. The Celestial Brush is a successful example of this, as an effective interface metaphor which keeps the player grounded in the visual language of the game world and reinforces their sense of omnipotence. By finely tuning these metaphors, Okami turns being a mythological Japanese god into a successful game experience – rather than a mere feature of the story line.

References

1. Ashcraft, Brian. “Breaking: Clover Studio is Dead.” Kotaku, 2006.
2. Rusch, Doris / Weise, Matthew. “Games about LOVE and TRUST? Harnessing the Power of Metaphors for Experience Design.” 2008.
3. Grodal, Torben. “Video Games and the Pleasures of Control.” From Zillmann, Dolf and Vorderer, Peter (Eds.) Media Entertainment. The Psychology of its Appeal. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
4. Lantz, Frank. “GDC: Game Developers Rant II“. March 24, 2006.
5. King, Geoff / Krzywinska, Tanya. TombRaiders. Space Invaders. Videogame Forms and Contexts. London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2006.
6. Rusch, Doris. “Emotional Design of Computer Games and Fiction Films.” From Jahn-Sudmann, A. / Stockmnn, R. (eds.), Games Without Frontiers – War Without Tears. Computer Games as a Sociocultural Phenomenon. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
7. Bogost, Ian. “Persuasive Games: Performative Play.” Gamasutra: The Art and Business of Making Games, 2008.
8. Bogost, Ian. “Persuasive Games: Gestures as Meaning.” Gamasutra: The Art and Business of Making Games, 2009.
9. Hocking, Clint. “i-fi: Immersive Fidelity in Games.” in GDC 2008, Game Developers Conference. 2008.

On the local side, I could have response objects be created within CoreData, yet the ominous statements from iPhone developers across the globe imply that I’d face a living hell come time to sync the application’s data with a web server. I’ve also looked at SQLite3, but to be frank I’m confused by the little documentation on how to use this with web services.

In fact, web services on the iPhone seem ill covered, or there is no true compendium of possibilities and/or sample code on the internet. What I was led to using is JSON, a lightweight computer data interchange format. This introduction, Andy Jacobs’ tutorials, and these tutorials proved essential to firstly learning what JSON is, learning how to use json-framework, and how to use PHP as a go-between my Objective-C code and my JSON code.

Let’s just say it’s been a marathon two days of educating myself about the different forms of data persistence available, and I’m so pleased with the web services solution I am using. Thanks to the authors of all of the posts above; I am finally able to read and write to a JSON file which can now be used to store responses! Furthermore, because the JSON is being posted by the PHP, I can do any series of things in the PHP such as convert it to XML or MySQL later, and retrieve from there as well in that event.

Excellent. It’s relieving to have this burden off of my shoulders…now, on to the next thing (prettify the interface more, upload images and save their URLs to the JSON file; my tasks for tomorrow).

Just the development process was somewhat iterative, as it was an ongoing learning experience – for example, I completely rewrote the application when I realized that my MVC model wasn’t very sustainable or usable. Fortunately, Apple’s supplied view controllers (such as the navigation view controller) and their sample code were there to help, and while even after writing little programs in Objective-C all semester I was having difficulty adjusting, Apple’s resources helped me to the point that I feel incredibly comfortable with programming for the iPhone. (Thanks for nothing, “Beginner’s Guide to iPhone Programming.”)

Unfortunately, much more difficult than expected was working with the File I/O. Unlike in C#, used on the Microsoft Surface, Objective-C on the iPhone seems not to easily support both reading and writing to an XML file on a network. Because this is essential to the functioning of my application, I anticipate spending the next week attempting to learn more about SQLite3 and Core Data, and determining which one I should be working with (and how, to store my data).

It has also been difficult to find a tag-reading SDK that I can use to tag works in the museum. While RedLaser offers a very inexpensive SDK considering the great technology they offer, having to upload items to Google Base in order to have them read is problematic, as the paintings obviously aren’t products to be sold. It’s encouraging to see that Microsoft has developed Microsoft Tag, software that would address our needs, yet they have not released the SDK and apparently they have no plans to (only potentially to release the API, and they haven’t done that yet either).

The latter two issues (implementing database access/reading/writing, finding and implementing a tag-reading SDK) are those that I see myself focusing on over the next two weeks. Something that I look forward to (in addition to resolving those) is also designing the aesthetic for the application, such as the icon and the rest of the graphic polish.

The development process was an interesting one – I experienced several trials and tribulations when installing the Surface development environment on my computer, and after purchasing and installing Windows 7 (twice – always install the 32-bit version, people) was heartbroken to discover that my computer’s resolution (1440×900) is just shy of the vertical requirements to run the Surface Simulator. No worries, though, an external monitor came to the rescue – but this was and is a definite setback.

When it came to actually developing for the Surface, getting the grid structure to behave the way I wanted it to presented some confusion, but the great result was that I developed some very reusable sample code that may help inform other CS349 projects in the future.

After plenty of researching, one happy surprise was that doing file I/O – and particularly with XML – is extremely intuitive on the Surface. After learning about the correct syntax and structure, implementing the input and output was fairly simple (unlike, say, on the iPhone, which is melting my brain right now). After demonstrating our application and attempting to tweak the output from the responses it’s become apparent that when the file saves it does so to a local file, which so far I am both unable to locate and edit. Furthermore, a next step is to only retrieve the most recent five or so responses.

At this point, the most significant tasks left to do are improve the display of information, the methods of “cleaning up” the screen, include guards against “dummy” data, and develop the sorting algorithm mentioned above. The great thing is that because our architecture is very modular it shouldn’t be difficult to work with our structures, and the most challenging final step will probably be to improve (and render as usable as possible) our aesthetic.

Unlike Weiser, in “Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces Between People, Bits and Atoms,” Ishii and Ullmer state their interest in moving away from GUIs nearly altogether, taking the idea of invisible computers quite literally and embedding them in everyday physical objects. As the authors themselves put it, they are more interested in “awakening richly-afforded physical objects, instruments, surfaces, and spaces to computational mediation, borrowing perhaps more from the physical forms of the pre-computer age than the present.” A key example is the ClearBoard, intended to change a wall “from a passive architectural partition to a dynamic collaboration medium.” The objects in the ambientROOM subtly display and communicate information by their very natures, and not by a concrete display of information on a GUI. As the authors put it, “GUIS fall short of embracing the richness of human senses and skills people have developed through a lifetime of interaction with the physical world.”

Our project is more within the scope of Weiser’s idea of ubiquitous computing, as it is an application written for a GUI, albeit a GUI embedded in a table surface. Particularly considering the project’s extension that I am developing on the iPhone, this system is comparable to pads (iPhone) and live boards (Surface), a bit more ubiquitous and spatially relevant to the different parts of the Davis Museum in which they will be used. Ways in which our project can be a bit more attuned to the goals of Ishii and Ullmer is by including iconography and objects in the application that are modeled on physical objects and interactions with them, moving away from common GUI idioms such as buttons to move forward and to close objects.

Our application, in its native state, will display a word cloud including the names of the galleries’ themes. By adding one of three tokens (time period, materials, and geographical origins), the user can modify the word cloud to display the names of such subgroups. Upon dragging a subgroup out of the word cloud, a cluster of related images populates around the word, which the user can drag out of the cluster to look at individually. When dragged out, the image automatically enlarges. When the user selects it, a prompt slides out next to the image asking them to think critically about the piece in one way or another. To respond, the user may “finger paint” directly on the image or in a space below the question, and submit it to the database. Afterwards, they can view others’ responses as well.

In these ways, we believe users will feel personally connected to the works and invited to think about them analytically before and after they actually enter the galleries. Furthermore, they’ll feel connected to the other visitors of the museum, and as if they are part of an active and analytical community. By doing so, we believe our application is ideal for humanizing the lobby space, making the Davis Museum a more social space, and extending the learning of visitors through every stage of their visit and even beyond the museum’s doors.

It is my intention that this application will provide visitors to the Davis Museum with navigation assistance, retention assistance, the ability to “tag” pieces, and the ability to create preference-based tours. This will instill a greater spatial awareness in visitors based on their current locations, and build usable relationships between pieces based on facts and visitor contributions. This would transform their iPhone or iPod touch into a unique tool informing the choices made during a visitor’s museum experience.

So that learning can continue outside of the museum, I would also like to include the ability to retain and share a visitor’s experience. What if the application created a database of information about a visitor’s favorite pieces, tags, and recommended pieces they ought to see next? Or what if there were a mechanic for recording comments or artifacts that are private to the viewer, to share with friends later?

Recently, other TUI researchers and developers have become inspired to answer the demands of museum education as well. Research topics include museum education via mobile gaming, the ability to add tags to a database, and collaborative multi-device learning activities. The research of Jolien Schroyen, et. al. in the ARCHIE project revealed that creating a mobile gaming experience that runs in tandem to a museum tour helps students absorb the information and become engaged with the subject matter. Additionally, the work of Dan Cosley, et. al. in the MobiTags project found that “tagging” works was beneficial to viewers who wanted a less formal, more personal connection to the pieces. Also, it’s informative to visitors about the types of pieces in the museum as well as the types of visitors that have preceded them.

Clearly, a mobile platform is well suited to tailoring the museum experience to its unique visitors, using GPS information to keep them aware of their location and its offerings at all times. In conjunction with a tagging mechanic, this will allow viewers to feel as if the museum space is more like their personal space, tailored to their interests and their unique goals. Finally, by allowing visitors to bring the experience out the doors with them, a mobile application can allow visitors to share or recall their experience on the fly and in other public settings. As I develop and test prototypes, I will be interested to gather feedback about whether a game-like mechanic is as enticing for all demographics as it is for young students, and what other techniques can be used to make the museum experience a more social one as well.