Digital storytelling at Kew

Stories at Kew was a BBC/BT mobile video storytelling and generating project set in Kew gardens.

Visitors were able to listen, watch and create context relevant video on mobile phones.

Visitors wandered to specific locations in the gardens gathering audio and video.

At each location they were asked to film answers to searching questions like ‘what would you bury for 100 years?’ and ‘what would you like to be remembered for ?’.

As user generated content was added into the system visitors could view this on their mobiles.

A large plasma screen showed organic digital plants which grew as more content was ‘planted’ into the system. Random selections from this foraged content were also displayed.

Research questions: alongside evaluation of technical performance and usability – the BBC was interested in finding out about people’s motivations to contribute contextual content.

Which triggers worked best? How did participation vary across different user groups (age, technology usage, group size)

I was involved in conducting interviews, ethnographic observation, data interpretation and documentation.

We gathered evidence from mobile phone data, visitor interviews and ethnographic observation. We wanted to compare what people actually did, with what they said in 1:1 interviews.

Analysis of mobile phone data allowed us to compare different levels of engagement and the degree of participation between user groups – total visit time, amount and type of content retrieved and created.

Interviews gave us a deeper understanding of individual visitor experience and opinion.