‘Curse of the Mummy’
In 2005 BBC Factual and Learning created an award winning interactive storytelling exhibition to accompany the BBC1 series on Egypt.

This was a pilot project designed to help the BBC test ideas for telling interactive stories in 3D space. The aim was to re-purpose existing material from the TV series in order to create an immersive storytelling environment.

The Mummy’s Curse was a screen based interactive quest where the visitor was placed in the role of a 1920s journalist on a mission to Egypt. Challenges had to be solved in order for the story to progress.

Visitors were required to register in order to carry out the quest, each group was given an RFID enabled ‘press card’ which meant the system could track visitors and know where they were in the story.

Visitor Experience
I conducted user research in order to understand visitors experience of the exhibition and the impact this had on learning.

Visitor research involved listening to what people said about the exhibition, but also observing what they actually did. I used a number of different evidence-based research techniques.

Survey and Interview
1:1 interviews were carried out with family groups and individuals before and after the quest. Interviews were a also conducted with educationalists and teachers. Structured questionnaires were designed for school groups and anonymous questionnaires offered to all visitors.

Vox Pops
A video booth was created for visitors to leave ‘free-form’ feedback

Rapid ethnography
Observations and recordings were made of peoples interactions and responses to the interactive quest.

Shadowing:
Visitors were tagged to observe closely their interactions with each other as well as with the artifacts and interactives.

‘Hidden’ camera
A fixed camera recorded the Augmented Reality installation over a large number of hours.

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The evaluation report illustrated general learning outcomes (GLOs) and helped to identify barriers to learning. Recommendations were made for future iterations of the exhibition and new opportunities emerging from the pilot project.