April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2 - Educational Technology & Society

Phase Methods Visitor data collection
4 IF-Q1-Q2-
D-P
5 Q2-D-P
Same questionnaire as in phase 3. The focus interviews aim to understand the game
experience of the players.
Survey given to the players after playing.
Survey topics: visitor’s motives, self-evaluation of their learning experiences, their opinion
about the game and the museum, and their suggestions for the improvement of both.
Instrument for the creation of the HCG stories
Based on the visitors’ requests after the first two phases (Figure 2), we decided to create HCG stories that would
promote a conversation between the past and the present through the mobile phone and in which the visitors would
actively take part in on-site activities. These activities are interwoven with the HCG stories.
Each activity is a sequence of individual actions (Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamäki, 1999). Thus, each HCG story
contains the actions needed to complete an activity. For example, if a virtual host needs to make coffee, the actions
involved in the activity are toasting coffee beans, grinding them and then putting them in a pot in order to brew the
coffee. As the series of actions progresses, the result of the activity is shown to the player. The player must also
perform different actions in real life to keep the story going. These actions are, for example, finding the objects and
entering their code into the mobile phone when requested. We call these actions player interactions. The player
receives feedback once s/he has interacted with the system. The feedback matches the player’s activity as well as that
of the HCG story.
Each HCG story in LieksaMyst is told through a combination of scenes. Every scene has a clear learning objective
related to Finnish history and utilizes objects displayed on-site. Most of the activities, objects and media used are the
ones that the visitors reported they preferred (Table 5 and Figure 5). The scenes are strung together to offer a vivid
lifestyle experience of a specific historic period.
Figure 3. Instrument used for developing LieksaMyst stories
The format of the communication instrument (Figure 3) between curators and researchers allowed us to share a
common language. It permitted us to easily detect the programming and the storytelling structure and allowed us to
identify the embedded on-site elements, the learning aim, and the media involved to stimulate different affections or
intellectual challenges. For example:
1. Scene – specifies the number, title, and location of the current scene in real life. It also indicates the location,
time and hour of the scene in the host’s life.
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