BAT

Build-a-Tree (BAT) is a multi-level puzzle game designed to help people learn about evolution and to develop phylogenetic tree-thinking skills.

  • Through game play people can learn about relationships between different groups of organisms as well as the traits that help define those relationships.
  • At the end of each level, people can compare their tree to the scientist tree, reinforcing the idea that the left to right ordering of tips is not important as long as the branching structure remains the same.

Video

Publications

2015

(Best Paper Award) Fluid Grouping: Quantifying Group Engagement around Interactive Tabletop Exhibits in the Wild
Florian Block, James Hammerman, Michael Horn, Amy Spiegel, Jonathan Christiansen, Brenda Phillips, Judy Diamond, Margaret Evans, and Chia Shen. 4/18/2015. “(Best Paper Award) Fluid Grouping: Quantifying Group Engagement around Interactive Tabletop Exhibits in the Wild.” In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'15). New York, NY, USA. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Interactive surfaces are increasingly common in museums and other informal learning environments where they are seen as a medium for promoting social engagement. However, despite their increasing prevalence, we know very little about factors that contribute to collaboration and learning around interactive surfaces. In this paper we present analyses of visitor engagement around several multi-touch tabletop science exhibits. Observations of 629 visitors were collected through two widely used techniques: video study and shadowing. We make four contributions: 1) we present an algorithm for identifying groups within a dynamic flow of visitors through an exhibit hall; 2) we present measures of group-level engagement along with methods for statistically analyzing these measures; 3) we assess the effect of observational techniques on visitors' engagement, demonstrating that consented video studies do not necessarily reflect visitor behavior in more naturalistic circumstances; and 4) we present an analysis showing that groups of two, groups with both children and adults, and groups that take turns spend longer at the exhibits and engage more with scientific concepts.

2014

Game Arcade: Build-a-Tree
Krystal Villanosa, Florian Block, Audrey Hosford, Michael Horn, and Chia Shen. 6/11/2014. “Game Arcade: Build-a-Tree.” In Games, Learning, and Society Demo Track (GLS'14).Abstract
Build-a-Tree (BAT) is a multi-level puzzle game designed to help people learn about evolution and to develop phylogenetic tree-thinking skills. Through game play people can learn about relationships between different groups of organisms as well as the traits that help define those relationships.
Build-a-Tree: Parent-child gaming to learn about evolution in museum settings
Krystal Villanosa, Florian Block, Michael Horn, and Chia Shen. 1/1/2014. “Build-a-Tree: Parent-child gaming to learn about evolution in museum settings.” Games, Learning, and Society (GLS'14).Abstract
Build-a-Tree is a puzzle game designed to facilitate learning about evolution in museums. BAT asks players to construct phylogenetic trees (known as cladograms) using tokens depicting species and traits. Cladograms are a fundamental representation used by scientists to communicate hypotheses about common ancestry and shared trait inheritance. BAT challenges players with seven increasingly difficult levels. To win BAT, players build on what they learn in early levels to complete more complex trees. Visitors play BAT on a multi-touch display with visual tokens that can be independently and simultaneously manipulated. Players arrange tokens to build trees that accurately depict relationships of plants and animals. BAT is the result of an iterative design process in which numerous prototypes were developed and tested over three years. We have begun testing BAT at a natural history museum with parents and children to better understand how gaming might influence interpretation of museum objects.

2012

Of BATs and APEs: an interactive tabletop game for natural history museums
Michael Horn, Zeina Atrash Leong, Florian Block, Judy Diamond, Margaret Evans, Brenda Phillips, and Chia Shen. 5/5/2012. “Of BATs and APEs: an interactive tabletop game for natural history museums.” In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'12). New York, NY, USA. Publisher's VersionAbstract

In this paper we describe visitor interaction with an interactive tabletop exhibit on evolution that we designed for use in natural history museums. We video recorded 30 families using the exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. We also observed an additional 50 social groups interacting with the exhibit without video recording. The goal of this research is to explore ways to develop “successful” interactive tabletop exhibits for museums. To determine criteria for success in this context, we borrow the concept of Active Prolonged Engagement (APE) from the science museum literature. Research on APE sets a high standard for visitor engagement and learning, and it offers a number of useful concepts and measures for research on interactive surfaces in the wild. In this paper we adapt and expand on these measures and apply them to our tabletop exhibit. Our results show that visitor groups collaborated effectively and engaged in focused, on-topic discussion for prolonged periods of time. To understand these results, we analyze visitor conversation at the exhibit. Our analysis suggests that social practices of game play contributed substantially to visitor collaboration and engagement with the exhibit.