Exercise 2 - Isabella Richiello

Interview with father visiting with his 7-year-old daughter

Interviewer=Bold text

Father=Normal text

Du är här med dina barn?

Ja, ett barn.

Hur gammal är hon?

Pappa: Hur gammal är du Tyra?

Dotter: Fem år, snart sex faktiskt.

Pappa: Det är första gången som Tyra är här, jag har varit här ganska ofta.

Vi har olika dragningskrafter, vi har alltså inte exakt samma intressen.

Vad har ni för olika intressen?

Hon vill vara mer där nere. Hon vill vara nere i läskiga mörka rummet, dit jag inte vågar gå in i. Men det är mycket intryck för en femåring, hon ville fika direkt.

Hur kommer det sig att du kommer tillbaka till Tom Tits?

Jag tycker att det här är jätte spännande och det är väldigt utvecklande för barnen, jag själv jobbar ju i skolan så det hänger ganska mycket på det. Sen har man ju kul själv. Jag var med när de byggde det här, var med hela vägen och utvecklade. Då var det bara våningen där nere när man kommer in och bara det tyckte man vara helt fantastiskt.

Känner ni att det är bra att ni får vara delaktiga och hjälpa till?

Ja, allt som är interaktivt är roligt och spännande.

Vill ni låta barnen förstå själva?

Jo, jag får jobba på att inte lägga mig i så mycket. Hon är lite liten för vissa grejer.

Finns det tillräckligt med information här på plats om hon har någon fråga kring något eller är de viktigare att hon försöker?

Det är viktigare att hon försöker, hon är inte intresserad av förklaringar än så länge märker jag. Sen har jag ju äldre barn som är det men nej.

Vad har du tyckt vart roligast idag Tyra?

Såpbubbleshow.

Känner du till appen som finns?

Nej, har inte lagt märke till den.

Vi förklarar appen…

Det är jättebra att man kan läsa på en gång. För det saknar jag, det finns ju en bok eller guide men vissa grejer förstår man inte riktigt hur man ska göra. Och det skulle vara jättebra med en app då.

Att ha mobilen framme skulle alltså vara helt ok och inte störa?

Nej.

Någon tanke kring något du saknar här?

Jag saknar min mamma.

I thought that this interview was interesting since it gave a perspective of that parents do have fun while going around with their kids. He tells us that his daughter mostly wanted to spend time on the first level. Tom Tits first level is full of try it yourself experiments meanwhile for example you find the illustration section on level three. He says that he thinks this is because of her young age and careless thoughts of understanding; the touching and trying is more fun than the actual understanding part of what and why it’s happening. I think this is something useful for us during this project since most of the visitors were around his daughter age, which I noticed while observing other. Reasons he comes back are partly because he also enjoys the museums experiments and likes to try them himself. This makes me more convinced of keeping our target group as parents with children. One of the things we wanted to investigate was if parents maybe rather sit down and relax while their children play. But in this interview and others the parent is glad to be a part of trying out and seeing experiments along side their child. It’s also encouraging knowing that he says that the idea of implementing technology to the museum is a positive thing.

                                                                                                                                                               

State-of-the-art analysis

Tom Tits has a mobile application called Tom Tits Exp. In this app you can find information about the museum and its experiments. The target group for the app is everybody that has a smart phone or tablet with preferably access to Internet.

There are three tab pages; Info, Karta and Experiment.

In the first tab, Info, you find information such as opening hours, ticket prices, location and a short text about the application in divided blocks. For more information than the short one given you have to click on the link beneath each block which connects you to their website. I feel this is something unnecessary since the app should be able to provide all the simple information without constraining the user to visit the website. For example in the block opening hours, “Öppettider”, the actual opening hours are not mentioned. The information you find is that they are open all year round, they have extended opening hours during holidays and you can find cafes, store and restaurant there. As a user I would find this irritating as the blocks name, “Öppettider”, promises me to find a specific information only to realize that I have to connect to the website to get that information I wanted. It ruins the purpose of the app since you still are dependent of the website.

The next tab is map, “Karta”, where you find a map of Tom Tits. All the four levels and the outside park are included which is a positive thing. The buttons for switching from one level to another are at the bottom of the screen and very small. You can zoom in on the map and move around easily.  All the rooms have a small bubble you can click on to see its name. Some are only seen as you zoom in on a room. Also only some of those bubbles are links that lead to further information about the room. They show a short explanation of the room, and the user has a button to share it on e.g. Facebook. I feel that idea of giving the user a possibility to share a location on Facebook is smart but poorly implemented on this app. It’s hard to find it and easily missed since it’s only on two of the bubbles on the map.

The last tab is a list on the experiments on Tom Tits. The text information is small and hard to read on a small screen. Information about what it is and how to use it is mixed and the user is not given the opportunity to sort out text. Some users with small children only care about how to make it work and not about its background. It also takes time to type in the name of the experiment and search for it.

The first thing we noticed when trying the app is that all the experiments are not listed. There was a father with his young daughter during our visit that was actually using the Tom Tits Exp app, he tried the app for the first time on an experiment that had no explanation sign. While observing him we noticed he couldn’t find the experiments explanation on the app. We encountered this man at the end of our visit and asked how his experience with the app had been through out his visit. He told us that he actually gave up after not being able to find the first experiment. This is a good example for showing that trust from a user is easily lost when technology doesn’t live up to a their expectations.

The app should be helpful when you can’t turn to other things as information signs or staff, and this app fails on that point.

Some ideas to make the explanations easier are to make them more visual than written. A simple thing as a .gif could help the user understand how an experiment works.

While interviewing parents we also noticed that many of them didn’t even notice or know there is an app available. The information about the app could be more displayed for the visitors, especially on the website so they have time to navigate around before the visit.