Author: professorsandcastle

Matthew Robert Bennett, Bournemouth University and Marcin Budka, Bournemouth University

Museums are often perceived as dusty cabinets full off dead and ancient things, especially those institutions you’ve never heard off. You know the ones, the neglected pride of county towns that could play a vital cultural and social role but struggle for funding.

For some, technology is the answer, virtually recreating museums and their contents online, or launching fancy augmented reality smartphone apps that overlay videos of the real world with interactive computer-generated content. We certainly see the potential for such apps to make museums more exciting, especially to young people, and have recently been using them to bring dinosaurs to life.

But sadly our experience suggests visitors just aren’t keen on downloading these apps. So is there another way technology can help revitalise musuems and similar attractions?

We are working on a project called PalaeoGo! that explores how museums and parks can be enhanced by augmented reality, 3D digitisation and new search engines. Our first foray with augmented reality was at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, US, using a smartphone app called Zappar to support research undertaken there.

Using the phone’s camera to scan a code on a notice board or flyer brings forward a 2D computer-generated image superimposed on the phone’s live camera feed. Users can see a troop of mammoths walk over the horizon with the real landscape behind, or have their selfies taken with a mammoth. We’ve since created our own free app that recreates augmented reality dinosaurs and other extinct reptiles and mammals in 3D, without the need to scan a code.

We deployed the mammoth and a T. rex at various events in 2017 and 2018, allowing visitors to pose for selfies. The tech was embraced enthusiastically, not just by children but by older generations as well. We found the sense of technological wonder coupled with a chance to strike a silly pose with an extinct animal really appealed to the visitors.

But when we first deployed the app at a museum, in summer 2018 at the Etches Collection on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, it challenged our thinking. In fact, it stopped us dead. When we had staff on site to show people what was possible with our own tablets and phones, the technology had an impact and people were excited to see it in action (although they did not always download the app). But no one engaged when we relied on posters and banners to encourage visitors to download and use the app.

We failed at the first step, not due to a lack of interest in the technology or in the 3D dinosaurs deployed, but due to the fundamental reluctance of visitors to download museum apps. We have since found this experience to be shared by others, such as Skybox Museum, who also struggle to get visitors to download their app deployed at their site in Manchester. In fact, the feedback we’ve received so far suggests that simply getting people to download a museum app, rather than a problem with the underlying technology, is the biggest obstacle to its success.

What makes people download apps?

To find out why, we immersed ourselves in a growing body of consumer-based research on smartphone apps. It turns out that the characteristics of an app are less important when it comes to getting people to download it than whether they trust the makers, and that brand loyalty and familiarity help build this trust. We also know that the potential for social interaction and pure enjoyment are more important than the usefulness or educational value of an app. People want to be entertained, engage with others and are wary of potential risks to their phones and personal data.

So when you’re asked to download an app at the doors of a museum, the default position is to decline. It’s a hard sell, especially if you have children in tow. Promoting the app in advance helps but, even if you overcome this reluctance, people still want a guarantee of fun.

What’s the answer? Games are an obvious possibility. Which regular museum visitor hasn’t seen a horde of children with clipboards on some form of quest or hunt? Promising a fun game is perhaps the key to getting children to try the augmented reality we know can change a museum experience.

The alternative is to make such resources available without an app, and we are exploring this. One solution might be to enable visitors to access it through their phone’s internet browser or via a standard QR code. Another idea we are trialling is to preload the technology onto a tablet hired like an audio guide at a museum’s entrance. As the software doesn’t need downloading it can be more complex, for example using locational technology such as GPS that can prompt the user to activate the device at a given spot and offer content tailored to their visit. But this would make social interaction and downloading those fun-filled selfies harder.

We believe that technology has much to offer the museums of the future. In fact, we would argue it’s essential to their survival. In particular, mixed reality, a form of enhanced augmented reality where real people and objects are displayed in virtual worlds, has some exciting potential to create immersive, engaging and educational content. But for once, the smartphone may not hold the key.

Matthew Robert Bennett, Professor of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Bournemouth University and Marcin Budka, Professor of Data Science, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Computer animation (CGI) has revolutionised the film industry.  No longer is a writer or director limited by the constraints of delivery and execution, literally any action stunt or visual world can be created.  The limitations are now those of the digital artists, of the computation required, of time and budget.  Jurassic Park (1993) showed what was possible; dinosaurs reborn as you had never seen them before.  By the time of Jurassic World (2015) and its sequel (2018) hit our screens the wonder was gone; CGI was taken for granted.  Given that anything is possible, should we not now expect a greater degree of scientific realism?  The Martian, for example, was widely lauded for its scientific veracity, but even here scientific veracity (i.e. the dust storm, radiation risks and geological aspects of the landscape) were not allowed to get in the way of a good story; after all we go to the movies to be entertained not educated.  Or do we?  Subliminal learning particularly in challenging scientific and gender stereotypes matters.  After all, aside from a rampant genetic hybrid of a dinosaur in Jurassic World it was ultimately the male and mad geneticist that is the true villain of the pierce.

Most scientists would agree that there are lots of good science programmes and documentaries out there today, but there are also some very bad ones.  Many documentaries and films play to the lowest common denominator, ‘sexing’ up the risks to humanity of a particular phenomenon and combine stock images and video carelessly.  The last point is a good case in point; just about every documentary that involves a volcano plays to the geological stereotype of red hot molten lava, when in fact gases and volcanic ash are perhaps the norm and only a few of the world’s volcanoes actually produce such fluid molten lava.  It is a volcanic stereotype reinforced by countless movies such as Volcano (1997).  Similarly the fact that the velociraptors of Jurassic World remained without feathers, despite the advance in science since 1993 that suggested they were in fact feathered is another example of a stereotype at work; we don’t see birds as frightening in the same way we see reptiles.

But is it really the fault of the film maker or animator?  After all their objective is to entertain not educate and stereotypes are essential ‘short-cuts’ in storytelling.  Is it not the fault of the scientist who fails to stand up and point out these failings?  Perhaps as scientists we should challenge the loose use of science-based stereotypes, not just around gender, race and the mad-demonic and out of control geneticist, but all those stereotypes that miss-inform and miss educate?  If we as scientist demanded more, were more vocal as critics especially of those who set out educate via documentaries, as well as those that seek to entertain would things change for the better?  The Martian was subject to a surprising level of scientific scrutiny – with countless blogs and newspaper reports documenting what was right and what was wrong with the science.  Perhaps fuelled by the claim to be the ‘most scientifically accurate film yet’.  It was good to see.  While ‘feather-gate’ (Jurassic World, 2015, 2018) still has palaeontologist grumbling into their pints (or not) perhaps they should have done more through public engagement and the use of their own animations to change the stereotypical dinosaur?  In the world of CGI where anything is possible scientists have an increasingly important role in constraining the art of the possible with a dose of scientific reality.

Portrayal of the social contract between state and university in the UK

There are bridges to be built since animation has huge potential in public engagement.  Public engagement is now an important part of most scientists work, a requirement of research funds and part of the agenda in most UK universities at least.  It lies at the core of the social contract between state and the university; that money is received to educate and research and while freedom to explore both is essential the reality of societal and economic are clear.  The growth of the impact agenda as part of the Research Excellence Framework in the UK has strengthened this as a drive to demonstrate both value for money but crucially societal return on investment.  Scientist now blog, hold numerous outreach events and some are actively researching the process of impact and engagement itself.  Animation offers one route to engagement.

A University funded project (2015/16) saw us working with a BU animation graduate (Katie Hill) to produce a series of short animated video clips to promote research in human evolution.  After all BU has one of the World’s leading animation courses and also has some great scientific research to shout about.   The clip showcased here shows what is possible with animation alone, and was generated to support footprint research at BU and to stress the importance of human evolution in a dynamic landscape.  The story is based on published scientific research, the terrain is based on digital elevation models derived from satellite observations, the vegetation assets reflect those present at the site and the footprints are based on detailed 3D models captured by photogrammetry in the field.  The behaviour of the volcano and the eruption is consistent with volcanoes of the region and referenced to real-life still and video images throughout.  The only nod to fictional composition was to move the signboard inside the site enclosure and to reverse it orientation.  The rest is accurate; a level of scientific veracity that in truth was not hard to achieve although the animation as a whole was not quick to produce taking six months of work. We used a second animation to help promote our work on springs and human evolution.

The point here is that getting things right in a world of CGI is actually not that difficult, but is matter of care and belief in its importance and collaborative working between scientists and animators.   Scientists have to stand up and engage, not just grumble from the sidelines and if they embrace the tools of animation they have much to gain.

I hate meetings, pure and simple, I have said it now!  I think that most meetings are a huge waste of time and I was refreshed to read the other day that others think the same.  In fact this piece set me thinking of my past as a senior university leader.

I hate meetings not just because I am introvert, and serious one at that, but because they rarely achieve anything and in my experience at least in the University sector are about the information cascade rather than real strategic decision-making.  In my experience decision-making is made by a very small group of University managers and is often strategically self-evident any way so needs little discussion, I should know because I was once one of them.  Consultation and debate rarely change in a meaningful way decisions that are made by these elite, although they would fiercely deny it as a truth.

My mother once said to me that you make a decision in an instant but spend hours, weeks or even years agonising over it and second guessing that initial instinct.  Malcom Gladwell is superb on this subject in his book Blink.  It is the same in universities where the elite (Vice Chancellors and their deputies of various types), make the decisions and rarely do those decisions change.  They manipulate consultation consciously and unconsciously, after all they have to seek a consensus from an academic body known for arguing about most things and prefer that consensus to be modelled on their own.  In fact I have only one concrete example in 26 years of academic experience of a VC changing their mind in face of academic debate.  It was Sir Paul Curran while he was VC at Bournemouth and he backed down in the face of academic opposition from Senate which in most Post-1992 Universities is only advisory.  For me it was a defining moment in a truly academically led regime, not without its faults don’t get me wrong, but such academic collegiate leadership at the highest levels is now rare in UK.  We have lots of good managers but true academic leaders are few.

I digress so back to my hatred of meetings.  There are those who love meetings and away days and the like, extroverts to a tee I am guessing.  I once was appalled to hear a colleague in a leadership meeting many years ago express their love of meetings: “gets me out of the office and lets me catch-up with the gossip”.  I want to be in my office analysing and writing, not wasting time on gossip after all I am a researcher at heart, and one who also enjoys his teaching despite being an introvert.  University meetings conflate three elements in my experience: (1) an important touch point for staff and teams (even an introvert accepts this); (2) information cascade and project monitoring; and (3) very rarely a decision point.

These three elements require very different things and most meeting chairs prefer to focus on the former two elements because in truth, except at the most senior levels in a university, few real decisions are actually made just referred up.  Call me cynical but in my experience this is the truth and also a source of huge irritation for those not part of the decision-making elite.  Isolating the first two elements from the other agenda is done at a chair’s peril because it exposes this, yet is essential to making meetings effective.

Now I have little positive to say for billionaire self-publicists like Musk, but the idea of him empowering people to walk out of meetings if they have nothing to contribute is truly awesome.  His idea of asking for meeting papers in concise prose and insisting the first 30 minutes of a meeting is devoted to silent reading of those papers is even better.  Banning slide presentation is fantastic to.  I would go further however and insist that all papers are hard-copy and phones and tablets are banned.  I used to have to attend a Leadership Team Meeting every fortnight with a large membership and a meaningless agenda driven largely by the information cascade.  The papers got so big and everyone had tablets so the move to electronic papers seemed sensible – to save the environment.  In fact attention at meetings fell and the length increased because most people got on with their emails and reading.  A cynic might say that it improved productivity, not of the meeting but in email response times!

Taking the information cascade out of meetings is perhaps the key challenge for any chair and to hold a meeting as a default is a logical solution since most delete corporate emails and bulletins.  While PVC at Bournemouth several years ago we set up a research blog as the information cascade and to replace static and tired information based web pages.  The archive became that resource over time.  The daily digest still pop’s into my email and I follow the links and read what I need.  I never managed to integrate this with a reduction in meetings however with an agenda focused on key decisions which is something I regret but could have been done easily in hindsight.  Open online discussions are something to consider.  The team outside my office door, who are not led by me, have stand-up meetings which is an interesting innovation and while PVC the most useful team meeting was a half hour over a coffee every Monday morning.  Called the prayer meeting by those who felt excluded (it took place in a campus coffee shop) it actually was useful as touch point each week for a team.  There are lots of innovations possible here with the aim of separating out the functional requirements for meetings as long as they are driven by a desire to reduce the total hours spent in such activity!  I would say that off course because my computer is where I want to be.

If you are a student reading this, then forgive the cynicism.  You are the next generation of meeting attendees and chairs and I beseech you to learn by our mistakes!