Walkthrough
The idea behind the project was to develop an interactive experience around the "Ajax and Achilles" amphora for The British Museum website. This was especially relevant in early 2021 when COVID-19 restrictions used to be stricter. During the pandemic, museums had to resort to digital and interactive opportunities like never before, to continue their mission of spreading heritage knowledge and not lose their audience. "Ajax and Achilles' Break" addresses those concerns and objectives and caters to the needs of a young audience (10 till 14 y/o).
Design Process
To attain a researched and evaluated high-fidelity prototype, I employed the double-diamond approach, which consists of four phases:
Discover
At first, I set out to research the context around the artefact, the museum's goal during the ongoing pandemic, the visitors/users' needs and heritage interpretation. One of the most crucial resources I studied was John Falk’s study about visitors' motivations and learning. (n.d.)
I also analysed preexisting interactive museum experiences, such as Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) Award's design competition. The latter awarded the best-reintrepredated art from its collection. In doing so, it stimulated participants' creativity and their will to share their own views of heritage.
Define
To better analyse and comprehend the data from the desk-based research, I created an Affinity Map. Through it, I grouped crucial points from each resource under different themes.
After having gained a deeper understanding of the data, I chose to establish two personas, a father and a son, which could narrow the focus of the project down to a specific audience. Employing the knowledge acquired from Falk (n.d.), I designed the father to be a “facilitator”, that is the category of visitors whose goal is to ensure a positive experience for the people they invited into the museum.
John (the first persona) wants Nicholas (the second persona), his son, to enjoy a fun and educational game while guiding him through it.
Nicholas Holt fills the role of the "experience seeker", a type of visitor who sees the museum as an experience that they can add to their list. In this specific case, Nicholas is looking for a unique experience to enjoy with his father.
I then set out to create empathy maps for the two personas, to better understand their relationship and needs.
Design Statement
The amphora displays a painting of Ajax and Achilles playing pessi (an ancient greek board game) while taking a break from a battle (Specifically, one from the Trojan War). This leaves an open space for interpretation of the dialogue between the two heroes. Aware of the idea and with the added knowledge from the research, I now had to design the experience and the user's role within it.
Building on the desk-based research analysis and the personas' needs, I outlined a concise set of user and system requirements. I employed them as a guide during the "develop" and "deliver" stages.
Develop
During the "develop" stage, I employed Balsamiq to wireframe two different low-fidelity prototypes of the experience.
The core structure of the experience saw the user starting the game from a title screen, and going ahead to a set of instructions for the game; after that Ajax greets the player and the main part of the game starts. The latter consists of a screen where the user could select different objects to prompt Ajax and Achilles to start a dialogue around the selected object. When all the interactions are exhausted, Ajax says goodbye to the player and the game ends.
The initial idea saw the player being able to impersonate Achilles, after an initial piece of dialogue from Ajax. To avoid the player writing a piece of dialogue that would be out of context in the scene, the user would be suggested different keywords to use. However, even with this addition, the user would have had the opportunity to write something that would not fit into the context. I thought of constraining options for the dialogues (e.g. being able to only write short sentences and forced to use the keywords) but I believe they would have hindered the user experience by a wide margin.
For this reason, I set out to create a second, simplified version of the game. In this rendition, the user would be able to insert their name at the beginning. When the user would make his selection, the heroes would mention the player’s name during the dialogue and treat them as part of the discussion. Thinking this would be a more logical option that still considered the user’s position in the experience, I set out to develop the final prototype.
Deliver
I created the final prototype through InVision Studio. I used Photoshop to modify an image of the amphora provided by The British Museum in order to have Ajax and Achilles along with different objects of the scene inside the game. In order to address one of the design requirements, the title screen displays a caption that tries to stimulate the user's curiosity. Furthermore, when the user hovers on one of the interactable objects (or people), they display a light blue border, suggesting the possibility of an interaction.
There is also a high contrast between text and background colour, for readability.