City University London School of Informatics MSc in Human-Centred Systems Project Report 2011 Playing with difficult objects: game designs for crowdsourcing museum metadata Mia Ridge Supervised by: Dr Sara Jones March 17, 2011 A note on this Open Access version, January 2013 This version is as submitted (barring minor typo corrections) but does not contain any of the Appendices except Appendix A. This is mostly because the Appendices contained interview transcripts that would need redaction to remove identifying information. This dissertation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, which means you can use it as long as you credit me, Mia Ridge, as the author. If you prefer to cite published papers, I have also published some of my research in: Ridge, Mia. 2011a, Playing with Difficult Objects – Game Designs to Improve Museum Collections. In J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds). Museums and the Web 2011: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. Online at: http://conference.archimuse.com/mw2011/papers/playing_with_difficult_objec ts_game_designs_to Ridge, Mia. 2011b. Crowdsourcing Games: Playing With Museums. In Beale, Katy (ed) Museums at play: games, interaction and learning. Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc. Otherwise, please cite this dissertation as below, in whichever style you require: Mia Ridge, ‘Playing with difficult objects: game designs for crowdsourcing museum metadata’ (unpublished Masters Dissertation, City University, 2011) or Ridge, M. 2011. Playing with difficult objects: game designs for crowdsourcing museum metadata. Dissertation. (MSc). City University. This dissertation received a Distinction. (Yay!). My work in this area is continuing in my PhD research on historians and scholarly crowdsourcing. By submitting this work, I declare that this work is entirely my own except those parts duly identified and referenced in my submission. It complies with any specified word limits and the requirements and regulations detailed in the coursework instructions and any other relevant programme and module documentation. In submitting this work I acknowledge that I have read and understood the regulations and code regarding academic misconduct, including that relating to plagiarism, as specified in the Programme Handbook. I also acknowledge that this work will be subject to a variety of checks for academic misconduct. Signed: Mia Ridge, ‘Playing with difficult objects: game designs for crowdsourcing museum metadata’ ii (unpublished Masters Dissertation, City University, 2011) Abstract This project explores the potential for casual browser-based games to help improve the quality of museum catalogue records. The project goal was to design and build casual yet compelling games that would have a positive impact on a practical level, helping improve the mass of 'difficult' - technical, near-duplicate, poorly catalogued or scantily digitised - records that make up the majority of many history museum collections. The project was successful in designing games that created improved metadata for 'difficult' objects from two science and history museum collections: Dora, a tagging game, and Donald, an experimental 'trivia' game that explored emergent game-play around longer forms of content that required some form of research or personal reference. Keywords: museums, collections, games, crowdsourcing, websites. Mia Ridge, ‘Playing with difficult objects: game designs for crowdsourcing museum metadata’ i (unpublished Masters Dissertation, City University, 2011) Table of contents 1 Introduction and objectives ............................................................................................... 1 1.1 The problem .................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Objective ........................................................................................................................... 2 1.3 'Difficult' objects ............................................................................................................ 2 1.4 Definitions ....................................................................................................................... 6 2 Research context and literature review ........................................................................ 8 2.1 Tagging and cultural heritage collections ........................................................... 8 2.2 Issues specific to museum audiences and collections .................................... 9 2.3 Casual games and design for participation ...................................................... 10 2.4 Designing games with a purpose ......................................................................... 13 2.5 Designing for participation .................................................................................... 16 3 Methods ................................................................................................................................... 17 3.1 Game design workshop ........................................................................................... 17 3.2 Game design ................................................................................................................. 21 3.3 Game build .................................................................................................................... 26 3.4 Game play-testing and evaluation ....................................................................... 27 4 Results ..................................................................................................................................... 30 4.1 Game design workshop ........................................................................................... 30 4.2 Game design ................................................................................................................. 34 4.3 Game build .................................................................................................................... 50 4.4 Game play-testing and evaluation ....................................................................... 51 5 Discussion of Results ......................................................................................................... 57 5.1 Game design workshop ........................................................................................... 57 5.2 Game design ................................................................................................................. 59 5.3 Game build .................................................................................................................... 61 5.4 Game play-testing and evaluation ....................................................................... 62 6 Evaluation, recommendations for further study, conclusions........................... 64 6.1 Evaluation against original project definition ................................................ 64 6.2 Impact ............................................................................................................................. 65 6.3 An ecosystem of museum metadata games? ................................................... 66 6.4 Further research ........................................................................................................ 72 6.5 Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 74 7 References .............................................................................................................................. 75 Appendix A Project Definition Report .................................................................................. 79 Game mechanics and interaction models for social good: a case study on crowdsourcing museum collections enhancement ......................................................... 79 Problem ........................................................................................................................................ 79 Project description .................................................................................................................. 79 Workplan ..................................................................................................................................... 82 Project Feasibility .................................................................................................................... 82 Mia Ridge, ‘Playing with difficult objects: game designs for crowdsourcing museum metadata’ ii (unpublished Masters Dissertation, City University, 2011) 1 Introduction and objectives This project investigated the design of casual browser-based games to help improve the mass of 'difficult' - technical, near-duplicate, poorly catalogued or scantily digitised - records that make up the majority of history museum collections. 1.1 The problem Museum collections websites, whether object catalogues or thematic sites with interpretative content, sometimes fail to achieve levels of public usage commensurate with the resources taken to create them. Many collections websites lack the types of metadata that would aid discoverability, or fail to offer enough information and context to engage the casual or non-specialist visitor who finds themselves on a collection page. As Trant (2009) found, the 'information presented is structured according to museum goals and objectives' and the language used is 'highly specialized and technical, rendering resources inaccessible or incomprehensible'.