Rock Art on Mobile PhonesPilot summative evaluation

Areti GalaniAron Mazel and Debbie Maxwell

About the project

• Making existing information about Neolithic and Early Bronze Age rock art more accessible

• Develop situated interpretation for rural sites

• Facilitate serendipitous cultural experiences

• Co-production was not a motivation

Empathy in design

“Empathy is about being able to imaginatively construct the world from another person’s perspective, while at the same time remembering one’s own point of view in order to creatively work with the difference.”

(Wright & McCarthy, 2010, p.70)

Three co-experience workshops

Prototype in the wild (two more workshops)

From co-experience to design

Interpretation objective Design approach Support findability of rock art

Granular and multi-modal navigation instructions

Communicate ambiguity and encourage speculation

Use of dialogic text/audio content which simulates conversations among visitors

Support sense of place Non-linear, modular set of interpretation materials across a range of modalities

Space for speculation: dialogical styleCan you see the grooves and hollows on the surface?

I can see a couple of marks here, but they aren’t very clear…

Well, if you look at the diagram afterwards you may be able to see them more clearly, especially when there is low sunlight.

Wow, I didn’t realise there was so much! This could be on rocks all over the hill!

Well maybe it is! The North East of England is particularly rich in cup and ring marks. Here, at Lordenshaw there are over a hundred carved stones scattered about the hillside. Throughout Britain and Ireland there are about six thousand of these ancient decorated stones!. And these are just the ones that have stood the test of time!

That’s amazing. But what does it all mean? Why did they do it?

The truth is that we really don’t know what they meant to the Neolithic and Bronze Age people who made them, but there are lots of ideas – some more sensible than others, from maps and route markers to doodles made by bored shepherds! Have you any ideas?

Mm, I don’t know. They look a bit like ripples on a pond, but I’m not sure. Maybe they’re just decoration…

It’s one possibility!

Pilot evaluation plan

• Small scale, 10 participants

• Shadowing of site visits using RAMP

• Debriefing interviews

• Focused Personal Meaning Mapping

• Usage figures from Google Analytics

Findings – figures*

• 2,567 online visits

• c.1,761 unique visits

• 747 visits on mobile devices

• c. 105 visits through scanning the QR codes

*(for the period: July 2011- December 2012)

Findings – visitor experience

• RAMP significantly aided the findability of rock art• Awareness of the existence of rock art increased

exploratory behaviour and persistence with mobile interpretation

• Dialogic text gave sense of visiting with other people and encouraged inquisition

• However, visitors were also keen to have access to more ‘factual’ information

• RAMP did not interrupt experience of the landscape – it encouraged sensory imagining

Food for thought

Empathy, co-experience = co-production?

Knowledge about how artefacts are experienced = knowledge about the artefacts?

Does awareness about the design/production method of interpretation affect visitors’ experience of it?

Thank you

areti.galani@ncl.ac.ukBlog: http://rockartmobile.wordpress.comWebsite: http://rochartmob.ncl.ac.ukFlickr: www.flickr.com/photos/rockartmobile