I caught myself wondering what the magic was about parks that made children never want to leave…and why they don’t tend to feel the same way when we take them to the museum.

The answer might seem obvious: at the park, children can play. But what is the psychology behind why they often prefer a fun excursion to the park over a visit to the museum? In my opinion, it all comes down to four key components:

Interaction, Emotion, Accomplishment, Emulation

These are the components that come into play when a child seeks the thrill of going down a slide, or pushes to come in first, or tries to climb higher than they have before. These also come into play when a child encounters a new environment, builds something with friends, or challenges them. All of these activities present the opportunity for children to feel joy and pride, and receive praise from their parents.

Is it possible to activate these motivators at the museum?

What can we do to make a visit to the museum just as exciting for our children as an afternoon at the park? A museum isn’t a playground; it doesn’t provide quite the same freedoms that a park or garden does. However, some museums do offer engaging and thrilling experiences for children – experiences that address the psychological motivators mentioned above.

But things can get messy when you decide to visit a museum with your family on a whim. As a parent, I’ve often been disappointed by the lack of “on demand” solutions for capturing a child’s attention and helping them to have fun in cultural environments. While science museums tend to be very imaginative when it comes to engaging young visitors, the same can’t be said for all museums. In most cases, it’s best to plan your visit in advance to make sure appropriate activities are available for children. Otherwise, you may be left to your own devices on subjects you may not necessarily be familiar with.

Digital devices to the rescue?

This is where digital tools on tablets and mobile phones come in handy. They provide an “on demand” solution with great possibilities, they offer content that can be adapted to many audiences depending on age level, skills and interests.

Digital tools provide quick solutions that are likely to activate all four motivators we’ve discussed above — turning museum visits into an experience your child will want to do again and again, and giving parents tools they’ll be excited to talk about with their friends. Here are a few examples:

INTERACTIONS

This is, of course, where the digital tablet comes in. A tablet should never be the focal point of the experience, but rather, a starting point. It should foster conversation between you and your child and facilitate interaction with the works of art and other artifacts on display. This is why digital games that combine storytelling and puzzles are the perfect tool for facilitating that interaction — they engage children and make them active participants in the cultural experience.

EMOTIONS

Digital tools can intensify the emotions children feel when they see a work of art or visit a heritage site. First of all, when they listen to a story, they are transported into the world of the imagination. In order for this to happen, you need a passionate narrator who not only tells the story, but brings the characters to life.

Digital tools offer infinite possibilities that are both fun and exciting for your child. For example, with augmented reality, your child could meet a historical character, dress a friend in a medieval costume, or pet a dinosaur… and of course, take photos to capture all the fun! Your child could also have a memorable cultural experience in virtual reality, which has been shown to have a particular emotional impact (see our article on VR here).

In short, digital tools bring you the best of new immersive technologies that can transport your child straight into another time and place.

ACCOMPLISHMENT

A digital visit can also foster a sense of accomplishment in several different ways. First, they provide rewards when the children earn points, collect objects, or look for virtual clues. Games also encourage them to keep progressing, for example, when they make it to the next step in a game because they were able to complete a challenge.

Gaining knowledge also contributes to that sense of accomplishment. When children learn something from a story, a quiz, or funny anecdote, they feel like they’re the only one who knows this special information, and they feel proud of what they know.

Another way to activate this motivator is to encourage creativity by asking the child to solve a complicated puzzle or complete an artistic challenge.

EMULATION

Games should be as varied as possible. That way they present a variety of challenges based on listening and observation (for example: searching for clues in the décor or in a work of art), questions that require careful reflection, or fun tasks (like taking a selfie posing like a character in a painting).
Games should also allow the child to accumulate points and/or objects to stimulate a healthy sense of competition. Children can then share their scores with friends.

These four motivators also have a biological basis

This empirical approach also has a more scientific explanation. Each of the motivators mentioned above also release different hormones that contribute to feelings of joy and happiness: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins.

• Dopamine produces the feeling of satisfaction we get when we earn a reward, meet an objective, or experience a good surprise.
• Serotonin triggers the feeling of self-esteem and self-confidence. It is released when a child feels proud.
• Oxytocin is released during social interactions; it produces feelings of attachment, connection, and sharing with others.
• Endorphins produce feelings of well-being, related to laughter.

Besides their emotional virtues, these hormones also facilitate memorization. Dopamine, for example, strengthens episodic memory, which allows us to relive scenes from the past.

When to start?

Today’s children are immersed in an environment that is both digital and physical. They see technology as a means to foster interpersonal relations and connect with both the reality and fiction of others’ lives.

When digital tools are used intelligently, they help museums and heritage sites to create strong ties with young visitors, allowing them to discover and enjoy the many treasures these sites have to offer.

Whether digital tools should be used in museums and heritage sites is no longer a question. The question for museums to answer is “How can we adapt digital tools to the particular needs of each museum and heritage site?”

Let’s begin with the ones we expect to make the biggest impact this year:

1. Immersive Technologies

As demand for a more and more realistic visitor experience increases, we’ve seen immersive technologies explode: virtual reality (read our article on VR here), augmented reality, mixed reality, 3D sound, and the list goes on…

Google Cardboard, Project Tango and others, like Microsoft Hololens, promise to make 2016 one of the most innovative years yet. Far from simply being gadgets, these technologies foster an ever more impressive user experience, taking storytelling to a whole new level.

2. Indoor Positioning Systems

In 2015, we saw an influx of iBeacon and Bluetooth Low Energy devices of all kinds. Initially, these technologies promised to revolutionize indoor positioning, with contextualized content, long battery life, limited maintenance, and ease of use… all at a relatively low cost.

As many sites today can now tell you, in practice, the experience is more complicated than anticipated. Installing beacons isn’t just a matter of taking them out of the box and distributing them around the site. They have to be set up with specific software and services if you really want to get the most out of their features, which has left many people feeling rather disappointed. To date, the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of a beacon is typically higher than originally expected.

Even so, beacon technology continues to expand; which is how the Eddystone standard recently came to be. With the market as competitive as it is, we can expect to see a lot more innovation in this area, which will lead to more complete offerings and better performance.

Aside from beacons, other indoor positioning technologies requiring less infrastructure are likely to develop. Experimentation is currently underway. We’ll be sure to tell you more soon ;-)

3. Collaborative Storytelling

A trend toward collaborative activities at heritage sites has already started to appear and we expect the trend to grow even more in the future. Collaborative storytelling invites passionate individuals involved with museums and heritage sites to come together and create a story together, whether they are teachers, students, experts, tour guides, docents or visitors. This approach allows access to multiple points of view, making it possible to reach all types of visitors.

Here at GuidiGO, we piloted a similar project ourselves last year (entitled “Viewing Angles”) bringing together no less than 17 cultural sites and over 400 students and educators.

4. Digital Content

There’s nothing new about content digitalization. What is new, however, is that digital content is becoming more and more open access, which is another contributing factor to the increase in storytelling and collaboration. The possibility of sharing makes it more appealing to digitize content, so we expect to see a virtuous cycle develop where users are producing and sharing more of their own content.

As more content becomes accessible, new uses for it are likely to emerge, whether you’re preparing for your visit in advance, or wanting to relive the highlights of your visit after the fact. Take Coopers Hewitt and MOMA, for example. Those who are unable to visit sites in person will be able to take part in immersive experiences remotely; virtual reality will allow students to visit museums on the other side of the world, and Twitterbots will make the museum experience ubiquitous.

The quantity of information available to us will continue to increase at an exponential rate, thanks to the democratization and diversification of the tools we now have at our fingertips: 3D scanners, 360° cameras and videos, aerial images taken from drones, and more.

5. From Wearables Technology to Connected Devices

Born in 2014, the wearable market took a break in 2015 – at least in our field. Today, Google and its subsidiary, Nest, seem to be exploring new uses for Google Glass, though they have not yet announced an official release date.

GuidiGO has been a “Glass at work” partner from the beginning. We were impressed by the impact this technology could have on cultural interpretation. During our experiments – at the Keith Haring exhibit at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, then at Velazquez and Picasso.mania at the Grand Palais in Paris – thousands of users shared our enthusiasm and told us they’d love to relive the experience at future exhibits.

Nevertheless, the break Google has taken with Glass shows their desire to improve on the technology before making it accessible to the wider public.

Today, smart watches are all the rage – they sprouted up like mushrooms under our Christmas trees this year. Smart watches are certainly great for very specific uses like real time notifications, performance tracking, and collecting health data. But in our field, these tools have not yet found their utility, as they aren’t yet capable of providing a compelling visitor experience in and of themselves.

However, wearable technology isn’t limited to watches and glasses. As confirmed at the latest CES, wearable technology will soon be everywhere, and sensors could soon make different levels of interactivity possible for visitors.

★ What’s next?…

Let’s leave 2016 behind for a moment and look even further… we can already count on two more trends:

Smart Personalization

When Big Data and Artificial Intelligence come together, museums and heritage sites will be able to offer uniquely personalized guided visits. The visit will be tailor-made based on the individual’s profile (his or her tastes, visit history, activity on social media, etc.) and on data sent from sensors placed throughout the site to capture position, popular areas, temperature, sound levels, and more.

It will then be possible to orient an art lover toward works most likely to interest him or her, right at the moment when conditions would be most pleasant; or to invite parents to explore a city as a family, using a treasure hunt that’s been adapted to the age of their children.

Pervasive and Invisible Apps

Today we talk about apps that are compatible with iOS and Android. Tomorrow, we’ll probably talk about apps being compatible with Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, Google Maps, and the list goes on. In the near future, mono usage and daily usage apps seem destined to fuse into one. Many interfaces are likely to move toward a card system which aggregates content from multiple sources in one place. A few attempts at this have already made an appearance, such as the Discover feature on Snapchat, or Uber on Messenger.

So there you have it. It’s time for our little journey into the future to come to an end. We’ll meet you back here in a few months to see how well our predictions hold up!