Ambiguity in design

This paper describes MStoryG, a digital art installation to be situated in a future open-air museum. Our goal with MStoryG is to provoke and engage visitors in collaborative storytelling by exploiting the ambiguity that visitors interpret from an airport split-flap display used as a medium for supporting Exquisite Corpse. In order to evaluate our concept we created a software replica of an airport split-flap display, deployed as an interactive public art installation. Visitors tweet, or through an adjacent laptop, contribute to the overall storytelling process by providing a story fragment that appears on the split-flap display for other visitors to read and build on. We argue that in the right conditions ambiguity can trigger curiosity and invite interaction, but special care is needed to avoid confusing and alienating users. Here we report on our ongoing public installation and next steps in deploying MStoryG with the physical board in locus.