A design research approach for iot gamification of museum visiting experiences

Museums, as educational spaces, use their collections to enhance knowledge acquisition and at the same time entertain their visitors. When the target audience of this informal learning are young teenagers, the natural solution are serious games, which can trigger young teenagers' motivation and engagement with the collections and spaces of the museum. This gamification can be provided through Internet of Things (IoT) approaches that include mobile devices, sensors and tags. This research used a design science research (DSR) approach to produce an IoT artefact that incorporates: A functional component - referring to features of the game; a contextual component - referring to the museum spaces and collections; and an educational component - necessary to promote informal learning within a gamification approach. The research design process used is different from the typical IS systems research. The complexity added by the pedagogical and contextual components led to a much more complex "awareness the problem" stage that consisted on a series of critical literature processes aiming at: Defining informal learning and gamification in museums, classifying museum educational roles and corresponding serious games types, and exploring how gamification using IoT have been used for enhancing young teenagers' experiences in museums. A theoretical model for the design of the artefact (the "suggestion") was then generated based on the characteristics of the IoT gamification and a selected type of game, used in a specific contextual space (room) of a participating museum. This design proposal was then interpreted in terms of requirements specification and the use of activity diagrams. At this point the "development" stage, used a rapid prototyping approach. The evaluation was performed in two steps: A laboratorial experiment to test the functional components of the design; and a field test to examine its educational effectiveness in context. The field test was done in three different iterations, with small corrections being done after each iteration. From this field evolution, a generalizable model for the design of an exploratory educational game for museums was established. Finally, the "conclusion" stage resulted in the development of a theory of use of the artefact in educating and entertaining teenagers in museum visits.