Mobile review: Owney AR app and Agents of Change Game

Editor's Notes

• #4: Owney’s getting a stamp in July! Hurry and make it special!
• #5: Larger team worked together to create other Owney projectsSub-set of that team involved in AR
• #8: Wasn't publicly available upon stamp issue Teacher focus group:In developing the curriculum, I demoed the AR for a group of teachers who were providing ideas on how to use Owney in the classroom. Cool is what they said when they saw it, but no one, even when I pressed, could think of a good way to use it in the classroom beyond an ice-breaker sort of introduction to OwneyOwney’s social media fans thought they didn’t have the tech to do it. His core followers didn’t find it relevant to their interests—and we don’t think it really brought in a lot of new people, according to “why did you decide to follow Owney on social media?” question responses.
• #9: 5. Lessons learned: a. Identify the target audience. Build goals and communication plans around it. Stamp collectors and people who stumble upon the stamp at USPS had to take their own initiative to discover the AR component to the stamp because there was no info packaged with the stamp itself—the technology didn’t magically build its own audience. Young people enjoyed the AR the most but it wasn’t really usable in classrooms, school tours, or public programs—it’s a cool little “trick” but doesn’t advance educational goals enough to merit inclusion when time is valuable. People who enjoy AR technology (typically folks “in the business”) liked the technological aspect and may have become aware of Owney through this project but didn’t really advance to explore Owney history or move beyond this one element. b. If sparkly technology is an “entry point” to deeper learning, think about where and how people will actually enter. The AR wasn’t referred to anywhere in the physical museum. That stamp isn’t part of the exhibit and there weren’t postcards or bookmarks promoting the AR. The app and website were mostly used by people who already knew about Owney via some other entry point (typically social media). They may have enjoyed the AR but they weren’t getting their first taste of Owney’s history—they were already insiders and the AR didn’t offer them a new place to go or new learning outcomes. It’s probable that very few people found the app or AR website and were introduced to Owney in this way—we have much stronger entry points. c. Was Owney’s AR interactive just for the fun of being interactive? A brief intro video about Owney probably would have accomplished educators’ goals better than the AR—but a video is very passive. The AR did have the advantage of being manipulable, but did it really add anything to the experience? If kids could have “petted” Owney to trigger him telling them his story, that might have been really rich. But turning him upside-down or making him jump didn’t necessarily increase learning, though it did increase interaction time. {not only interaction time, I think you can safely say it increased engagement with those kids at the opening.} d. Choose the “trigger” carefully. Decision to make stamp the trigger meant you had to have one or print one but it also meant it seemed to be promoting stamp sales—and USPS never really promoted the AR element or its connection to NPM. Wonder how it would have been different if a historic photo of Owney had been the trigger. {this is a larger issue of being one active side of a partnership. USPS couldn't promote anything because the timing was so tight and they have a much bigger infrastructure and larger customer base than NPM/SI. We thought we had given ourselves enough time to work with them, but the technology was slower to develop and we didn't meet milestones when we needed to for their involvement. This is the big reason for their non-involvement in the promotion end of things.} e. Think about the strengths of the technology (in this case, adding a new layer to physical reality) and try to fit it to the project goals. Augmented reality is partially about making reality better. It was cool to hold Owney in the palm of your hand but it didn’t really enhance the environment you were in. AR apps that include GPS can tell you where highly rated restaurants are located if you hold it up to the street—this is a situation in which it makes a lot of sense to overlay this computer-generated layer over your physical surroundings. Maybe other types of technology could have “brought Owney to life” or introduced people to Owney’s story—the element of enhancing the person’s environment wasn’t highly essential. In the end, educators may have been happier with a simple, well-animated video in which Owney briefly tells the story of his life to answer the question, “Who is Owney the dog?” This would be an entry point that would spark interest and move viewers beyond sparkle/technology to actually learn a little about Owney. (However, this would be less interactive.) f. In contrast to the e-book project? {In another mobile project, we did develop an animated version of Owney's story. It was another first-time development project for NPM and again, originated from OCIO's suggestions and involvement. This project faced many similar limitations: access to give feedback during development, reliance on communication between external folks. What it had, though, is a looser time-frame with no hard-fast launch date (still yet to be launched) and an opportunity to meet with developers to convey critical content and education goals. In establishing those at the start, we were able to push-back in ways they had altered from our original stated goals. In this case, the technology was still suggested to us, but we were able to create a product that met an existing need for the education department and the audiences it serves.
• #15: Methods: observation and interviews