04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 1/13

The Ebutius's DilemmaEMOTIVE experience was de-signed and produced in2017-8 by the followingteams of the EMOTIVE pro-

EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite andonline app for Roman Antonine Walldisplay at Hunterian Museum, Glasgow

Digital Storytelling to connect with the Roman Past --“Ebutius’s Dilemma” is a digital storytelling experience de-veloped for the Hunterian Museum at the University ofGlasgow. It tells the story of a Roman centurion who lefthis mark on the Antonine Wall in Scotland. The Antonine

/ Gallery / Submissions 2019 / EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for Ro-man Antonine Wall display at Hunterian Museum, Glasgow

YOUTUBE  EMOTIVE PROJECT

EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsiteEMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 2/13

ject consortium (EMOTIVE isa 3-year EC-funded Horizon2020 Research and Innova-tion project running fromNovember 2016 to October2019 - grant agreement727188) :University of Glasgow, UK(Information Studies, Schoolof Humanities & HunterianMuseum): Maria Economou(team leader), Hilary Young,Emilia Sosnowska; TheHunterian Museum sta�gave access to AntonineWall: Rome's Final Frontierdisplay and related collec-tion, facilitated evaluationand public engagementevents, and o�ered visitorpro�le information.NOHO (Ireland): Bre�niO'Malley & Karolina Badzmi-erowskaDigiNext (France): Cyril deMengin Fondragon, RemiCourtel, Souheir Mili, LoisBrunATHENA Research Centre(Greece): Akrivi Katifori,Vassilis Kourtis, Manos Kar-vounis, Maria Roussou,Christos Lougiakis, EktorVrettakisEMOTIVE project coordina-tion: Hara Stefanou, Exus

The �rst iteration of Ebuti-us's Dilemma was designedin August-September 2017with improvements andchanges carried out untilDecember 2017 using theStoryBoard Editor, which ispart of the EMOTIVE author-ing tools developed by the

Wall was the Roman Empire's most northerly frontier andis today part of a Unesco World Heritage Site. The Hunteri-an Museum hosts an outstanding collection of objectsfrom the Wall.

The "Ebutius’s Dilemma" EMOTIVE experience uses digitalstorytelling to interpret the objects at the Hunterian's "TheAntonine Wall: Rome's Final Frontier" display. It was de-signed to help visitors connect with the objects by enga-ging with Ebutius's story. A virtual version of Ebutius's Di-lemma was also designed for remote online visitors, recre-ating the museum space with a 360-degrees panorama.

The story is set just before the abandonment of the Anton-ine Wall by the Romans. The narrative uses the �ctionalcharacter of Ebutius, a Roman soldier faced with a di�cultchoice: The Roman army is abandoning the Wall - his homefor 20 years - and users are asked to help Ebutius decidewhether to leave with them or desert the army and staywith his local Caledonian partner and their child.

While exploring the app, users discover objects related todi�erent strands of the story which have emotional relev-ance to Ebutius. The story also resonnates with today's vis-itors by using universal themes that transcend time, likelove, family, and work.

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 3/13

ATHENA Research Centre(Greece). The second itera-tion, which improved theuser interface and includedsome extra content, was de-signed using the Visual Scen-ario Editor of the EMOTIVEAuthoring Tools developedby the DigiNext company(France) partner (January toJune 2018).

Contributions at the Uni-versity of Glasgow also byKate Vlakjeska, Erasmus+Hunterian Trainee on graph-ic design; and Dr RozhenMohammed-Amin, from Slei-mani Polytechnic University,Iraqi Kurdistan, NahreinFoundation and BISI visitingscholar to the University ofGlasgow, on evaluation re-search.Lawrence Keppie, EmeritusProfessor of Roman Historyand Archeology, HunterianMuseum and Dr LouisaCampbell, Arhcaeology, Uni-versity of Glasgow for gener-al advice on archaeologicaland historical backgroundand collections information.Billy Watt, University of Glas-gow English Hons studentand Drama Society membergave his voice to Ebutius.Museum Studies MSc stu-dents: Metaxia Adami (2018)assisted with the design andevaluation of the virtual Ebu-tius, while Rachel Nicholson(2018) and Claire Maguire(2019) researched the edu-cational potential of Ebuti-us's Dilemma with schoolteachers and pupils. Guillem

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 4/13

Marti (2014), inspired Ebuti-us's Dilemma with his"Deserter Cartoon" and re-lated story.

Historic Environment Scot-land: use of some graphicartwork, background con-sultation, and 3D models ofartefacts commissioned toSchool of Simulation & Visu-alisation, Glasgow School ofArt.--https://emotiveproject.eu/

Storytelling Antonine Wall Hunterian Museum Glasgow EMOTIVE EU PROJECTin-gallery interpretation virtual museum

CONTEXTThe Antonine Wall Site: Built around AD142 in the reign of the Roman emperor Ant-oninus Pius, the Antonine Wall ran coast-to-coast across Scotland from the Clyde to theFirth of Forth and was the most northerly frontier of the Roman Empire. It was aban-doned by the Romans who retreated further south, from the late AD150s onwards.

The Hunterian Museum and its Antonine Wall Display: The Hunterian at the Universityof Glasgow was founded in 1807. It is Scotland’s oldest public museum and home to oneof the largest collections in Scotland with over 1.5 million items. ‘The Antonine Wall:Rome’s Final Frontier’ is the Hunterian’s permanent display of the largest collection ofartefacts discovered along the Wall.

THE EBUTIUS’S DILEMMA HUNTERIAN EMOTIVE EXPERIENCEThe Ebutius Hunterian EMOTIVE experience designed for the Antonine Wall display wasdriven by the overall, high-level aim to increase or positively a�ect visitors’ engagementand connection with the objects on display, and more broadly with related themes, his-toric periods, heritage, museums, and the past. They were designed iteratively, followingthe EMOTIVE conceptual framework and guide, and a process of co-creation, inviting end-user groups wherever possible. We used personas for developing our experiences, i.e. ar-chetypical visitors based on the characteristics of real Hunterian visitors, and interpreta-

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 5/13

tion cards with key information about objects and exhibits. The use of personas helpedus focus on real users and integrate the user-centred approach throughout the designprocess. By creating multiple individual personas and designing experiences for di�erentcombinations of them, we were able to think of how individual behavioural characteristicsmight impact the design at hand, which in turn allowed us to re�ect on how to best bal-ance di�ering user needs.

The �rst experience features the character of Ebutius, a centurion, named after the namefound scratched on one of the hammerheads found on the Wall currently on display atThe Hunterian. The scenario covers the abandonment of the Antonine Wall by the Ro-mans, and started with the conceptual idea of ‘The Things We Leave Behind’ from whichderived the experience �nalised later as ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’. ‘The Things We Leave Be-hind’ helped explain how the objects currently on display in the Hunterian Museum usedto belong or be used by people who lived and worked on the Antonine Wall but were leftbehind when the Wall was abandoned. This also encouraged visitors to re�ect on paral-lels with their life today and the conditions that might make them leave material evidencebehind and what this can reveal about our society, values, and way of living.

The aims of the ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’ experience were:· To connect with the Antonine Wall through the story of the character of a Roman centur-ion· Address universal themes (e.g. family, work, love, loss)· Encourage empathy and emotional engagement· Engage with objects in the gallery· Challenge stereotypes (e.g. about military life, the relationship of Romans with locals)

Outline of narrative and experience structure of ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’In order to experience ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’, visitors in the Antonine Wall gallery are given asmartphone with a set of headphones and assisted to launch it using an app. The experi-ence starts with Ebutius introducing himself. His speech is displayed on screen as text to-gether with the graphic of a centurion, as well as a voice-over. On the following screenEbutius then explains the dilemma he faces: He must decide before sunrise whether toleave his home – the Roman fort at the site of Bar Hill - with the rest of the army, or staybehind with his partner, a local woman named Calle and their son Callum. He then asksthe user to help him make this life-changing decision and in order for visitors to be ableto do that, they are invited to �rst learn more about Ebutius and his life.

The experience has three main strands: one relates to Ebutius’s working life, another tohis personal life and a third to his sense of honour and duty. These strands, and the mu-seum objects that are cited within them, are all labelled according to the emotional relev-ance or signi�cance they hold for Ebutius. So, for example, a Roman distance slab is

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 6/13

linked with ‘His life’s work’ or a pair of children’s shoes with ‘My dear sweet child’. By usingemotive language and labels in this way, the experience encourages visitors from the be-ginning to foster a connection and empathy with the characters and the story.

The di�erent experience strands weave in the objects on display, directing the users to�nd the related artefacts and encouraging them to engage with them in new ways, bey-ond seeing them only as museum objects, and referring to underlying universal themessuch as work, love, and family and linking them with Ebutius’s personal story.

At various points in each experience strand visitors are given choices, either to hear othersegments related to Ebutius’s life, such as his career as a builder or to discover some gen-eral information about the object itself. If they choose the object they see an image of iton screen, with touchable hotspot areas which o�er further information, usually archae-ological facts, relating to the speci�c object and similar to the text in the museum label.

Visitors can continue to explore Ebutius’s life story by going another level into this narrat-ive or they can return to the main menu and explore the other strands, The love of his lifeor The sacred oath he swore, with similar structure and mechanics. At any point withinthe experience the user is able to choose to make the decision for Ebutius based on whatthey have found out about him from the experience.

Ebutius’s Dilemma Hunterian online virtual experience

BackgroundThe Antonine Wall online virtual experience derived from the onsite ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’experience. We have retained the story-based approach, which allows the online, remoteusers (who are accessing this while o�site from the museum gallery) to choose their ownpath through the experience while they navigate their way through the virtual, online rep-resentation of the display to locate objects pertinent to the story.

The following EMOTIVE teams were involved in developing this experience:• University of Glasgow providing image capture of the Antonine Wall display and concep-tual design.• ATHENA providing their Floorplan Editor Tool to create a virtual representation of theAntonine Wall display.• Noho provided scriptwriting for the original ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’ onsite experience.

The prototype was developed during the summer of 2018 and tested in August 2018-March 2019. The conceptual thinking behind this experience is that this is the o�site virtu-al version of the onsite experience which would allow both a) online, remote users fromaround the world (some of which might never have visited the Hunterian Museum) to ac-

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 7/13

cess the story and get a feel of visiting the gallery virtually, as well as b) visitors who haveused the onsite version of ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’ to access a version of this experience afterthey have left the museum. Evaluation with primary and secondary teachers highlightedthe usefulness of the o�site virtual experience not only as a visitor engagement but alsoas a teaching tool.

Experience PrototypeIn order to position the o�site virtual experience and the story of ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’within the Antonine Wall display, a photo-realistic representation of the gallery was re-quired with objects located within this representation and identi�able to the user. The vir-tual walkthrough of the Antonine Wall gallery is based on 12 360° images of the gallery, aswell as images of the display cases and objects taken on-site by the University of Glasgowteam at the Hunterian Museum using a 360° camera. These images were manually fedinto to the Floor Plan Editor tool to create a 360° panoramic view of the physical space.This virtual walkthrough serves as the foundation within which to embed the story, in thiscase, ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’. Two EMOTIVE authoring tools were used to create the o�sitevirtual version of ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’, the Storyboard Editor and the Floor Plan Editor. Theexisting assets related to the latest version of the ‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’ onsite experiencewere extracted from the Storyboard Editor and fed into the Floor Plan Editor by theATHENA and University of Glasgow teams. Users access the o�site virtual experience of‘Ebutius’s Dilemma’ via a link on the web using their own online connection and device.

Both the onsite and the online version of the Ebutius’s dilemma app have been extens-ively evaluated with a range of physical and virtual visitors. The results of our evaluationsshowed that the app and the whole EMOTIVE approach are making a major contributionto the state of the art of digital heritage practice, due to their capacity to engender visitorengagement with museum displays and cultural heritage sites, and – most importantly –their potential for emotionally connecting visiting audiences with the distant human past.

--

Extra media

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 8/13

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 9/13

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 10/13

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 11/13

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 12/13

MADE WITH:

FILTER BY CATEGORIES:

APP WEBSITE

GAMES & INTERACTIVEEXPERIENCES

FILM & VIDEO

MENUbeta

04/11/2019 Heritage in Motion - Europeana | EMOTIVE Ebutius’s Dilemma onsite and online app for …

https://heritageinmotion.eu/himentry/slug-b2e6e7d807bb52ee5213f837a00c4e98 13/13

MORE INFO

NewsContact

FIND US ELSEWHERE:

POWERED BY:

Home About us Terms of use & Policies Sitemap

MENUbeta