Day Two: 6 November, 2018

The second day of EMOTIVE’s User Workshop was held at the ATHENA Research and Innovation Center. On the agenda were the demonstration and evaluation of two experiences: a Virtual Reality visit to the site of Catalhoyuk, and an online chat with a Chatbot of Conviction (affectionately known as ChatCat), on the same subject.

Çatalhöyük Chatbot of Conviction

The EMOTIVE Chatbot of Conviction was developed in the context of experimenting with novel communication channels for EMOTIVE experiences.

The aim of the tool is to allow visitors to converse with a virtual persona about an archaeological site or museum, in much the same way that they would chat casually with a friend over Facebook Messenger.

The bot (dubbed ChatCat early in development :-) ) mixes the functionalities of an info bot and protest bot. It sequences interaction and conversation to include knowledge-sharing (info bot) with questions designed to probe visitors’ convictions (protest bot) about whether they would want to live in an egalitarian society like Catalhoyuk.

Two groups of four members interacted individually with the bot, on their own devices or on handsets provided by EMOTIVE (Figure 2). To capture feedback, the team adopted a think-aloud protocol along with observation of use. Then afterwards, the group discussed their experience in detail.

Çatalhöyük VR Experience

The Catalhoyuk VR Experience allows visitors to step virtually into the Neolithic site famed for both its architecture and its culture of social, political, and economic equality. It’s a shared, multi-user experience and we were very eager to demonstrate it to our participants and see how they reacted.

The goal of the experience is to enable users to explore the history and geography of the archaeological site, including its excavation areas and replica houses, while engaging in shared decision-making and critical thinking about property ownership, the emotional connection we have to personal belongings, and the relationship between giving and receiving - both in the past and in the present.

As with the chatbot, two groups of four entered the VR Lab, and one person at a time wore the head mounted display (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Guests trying out the immersive VR experience.

Wrapping it up

Day 2 concluded with an approximately hour-long debriefing session with all workshop participants, led primarily by ATHENA, UGLA and York. The session was engaged, wide-reaching and insightful. It brought up issues large and small about the role of storytelling in heritage and the purpose and best use of technology as a means of delivering interpretation.

In summary, the workshop brought 13 external experts together with members of the EMOTIVE consortium to discuss issues relevant to evaluation and the project at large. Participants ranged from museologists and historians to computer scientists, digital media designers, psychologists and neuroscientists. And it was highly successful. The EMOTIVE team gathered a very significant amount of rich feedback on evaluation approaches and solutions from the team. Since it took place, we have been parsing and analysing this feedback and implementing it in new iterations of the experiences. The results will be included in relevant deliverables and we’ll share details here on the website and through social media.

Stay tuned!  

 

Photo Gallery

Visit EMOTIVE Gallery to see more photos from the workshop.

Workshop participants

We would like to thank all the workshop participants for their attendance and valuable contributions to EMOTIVE experiences evaluation processes.

External participants in EMOTIVE Workshop #2
Name	Institution	Speciality
Jessica Hoare	Cardiff University, UK	PhD Researcher: Emotional Geographies of Museums
Steve Poole	University of the West of England, Bristol, UK	Professor - History and Heritage
Alyson Webb	Frankly, Green & Webb, UK	Founding Member and Partner, consultant on use of Digital in CH. Recent project includes Van Gogh museum digital
Sarah Fairbairn	Wallace Collection, UK	Curator (ARCHES H2020 Project)
Helena Garcia Carrizosa	Open University, UK	ARCHES H2020 Project Research Associate
Rozhen Mohammed	Sulaimani Polytechnic University (Kurdistan region of Iraq), Iraq	Head of the Digital Cultural Heritage Research Group
Angela Antoniou	University of the Peloponnese	Psychologist
Scott Sayre	Corning Museum of Glass, USA	Chief Information Officer
Conny Graft	Conny C. Graft Research and Evaluation, USA	Research and Evaluation consultant
Tedi Asher	Peabody Essex Museum, USA	Neuroscience Researcher
Edward J. Rodley	Peabody Essex Museum, USA	Lead media developer
Anna Foucher	Peabody Essex Museum, USA	Interpretation Planner / evaluation professional
H. Chad Lane	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA	Associate Professor, Department of Educational Psychology