Safnahúsið (The House of Collections)

Safnahúsið, an exhibition space in Reykjavík, partnered with Locatify to develop a treasure hunt game app for an interdisciplinary exhibition for people of all ages. With the app, called Listasafn Íslands, Safnahúsið increases its service to visitors who choose to visit the museum on their own and enables gamified learning. The app uses BLE Beacons to automatically trigger content in the pre-destined stations, and the game contains interactive questions about the artwork on show.

Opening people’s minds to the magic of art

Safnahúsið is Icelandic for “the House of Collections” and a recent addition to The National Gallery of Iceland. It’s located in a beautiful house on Hverfisgata 15 in downtown Reykjavík that was originally constructed in 1906–08 to house the National Library and the National Archives. There, visitors can see a treasure of Icelandic art from Iceland’s largest art collection.

The current exhibition, Viðnám (Icelandic for “resistance”), is an interdisciplinary exhibition for people of all ages that bridges the gap between art and science. It showcases works that are all owned by the National Gallery of Iceland.

From the exhibition website:

“Resistance is generally resistance or opposition, but the word can also be considered from a physics perspective. It is synonymous with the word electrical resistance, which is the reluctance of an electrical conductor to carry an electrical current. Resistance also refers to the resistance to consumption that everyone must adopt. Resistance also refers to the critical resistance that the world’s inhabitants must use against global warming in the fight against climate change. The works of art in the exhibition all relate to the discourse on sustainability, and ethical issues relating to efforts that may enhance sustainability. These works offer the opportunity to consider existence, nature, and other people: how people choose to lead their lives, and the influence they wish to have. In order to establish the conditions for a good life, many different factors must be taken into account – and not least the reciprocal effects between them. The key to sustainability is to live one’s life is such a way as to maintain a good life, while not reducing other people’s quality of life.”

The app & challenges

Research shows that treasure hunt games can improve learning, and a critical part of making the exhibition interactive is the treasure hunt game designed specifically for the project. Locatify provided a white-label treasure hunt game app with the client’s branding. Safnahúsið chose the Slider UI template, which is suitable for apps with a small number of games/guides. The user can swipe to move to the next tour or game. It contains an “About the app” menu item in the hamburger menu, and an optional “Redeem code button” for games that are only accessible with invitation codes.

The app contains challenges where players learn about the artworks and the concepts behind them, using question challenges (multiple-choice, single-answer and open-ended text questions), photo challenges and drawing challenges. Points are awarded for correct answers and for completing the challenges.

The exhibition is divided into four floors, representing different themes related to sustainability. Safnahúsið recommends you begin on the 4th floor, Air, where the visitor explores the atmosphere and the Icelandic uplands, an active volcanic zone in a state of constant formation. On the 3rd floor, Land, the works relate to the earth, biodiversity, flora, and fauna. On the 2nd floor, Ocean, some of the works depict different views of the ocean, in which humans either form part of nature or dominate it. Lastly, on the first floor, Principles, the subject relates to the laws of nature in the fields of physics and chemistry: everything from concepts in physics about vibrating strings, chaos theory, and wave theory to facts about the magnetic field of the planet.

BLE Beacons

Each floor is set up in the Locatify CMS and contains different stations. In Safnahúsið each station represents a room where BLE beacons have been installed. When the user enters the triggering radius of the beacons (usually around 1-2 meters), the content related to that station is automatically triggered. A station can contain multiple challenges and in this case, one room contains many works of art, so the app features different challenges related to the different pieces, as well as the overall themes.

Added features were a new challenge type, the jigsaw puzzle, and the ability to choose a banner color to represent each floor. The app content is added and can be updated anytime with the cloud-based Locatify Creator CMS®.

Accessibility

The app is available to download for free from the App Store and Play Store, but Locatify also provided the museum with dedicated Android devices running the app for school class visits, as well as headphones. The Android devices are secured to phone lanyards to allow for hands-free access.

The devices are managed by the Locatify Kiosk, a solution for easy setup and management of dedicated Android devices running Locatify apps. It’s suitable for any museum, gallery, sightseeing bus, or venue that uses a Locatify app on Android devices. The Kiosk will ensure that users can’t change any settings and only use the device as the owner intended. It checks for app updates daily and automatically installs them during off hours.

Custom Scoreboard & Privacy

In the scoreboard, Locatify added the feature of showing differentiated scores for each floor, instead of only the total game score. The game ends in the souvenir shop on the first floor and a small reward is sometimes offered to the players once they’ve completed the challenges on each floor. This feature is therefore important for the staff, in order to be able to quickly verify if a player has finished all the challenges.

In designing the app, there was a discussion on how competition might not be the best way to learn about art. As a result, it was decided to only display the results of one player on the scoreboard, to avoid the comparison of scores among players.

As the app is also aimed at students visiting the museum, it is extremely important to follow GDPR closely. Locatify addressed this by enabling auto-deletion of all photos taken in the app from the scoreboard after 12 hours.

We are happy to have contributed to this project and wish Safnahúsið and Listasafn Íslands all the best going forward!

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