The Keeper of Paintings

Getting Kids To Care About Culture

The brief for The Keeper of Paintings was fuelled in part by the need to adapt to the digital lifestyles that have become ubiquitous amongst young people. How can one of the most historic cultural institutions of the past 200 years, with art spanning millennia, connect with the TikTok generation? Designing a creative, play-based experience that immerses players into the game but also the Gallery and its collection is no small task, and at the outset it was not known whether this blend of tech, creativity and art would be enough to do the job.

A Co-Created Experience

Whenever we create experiences for young people, the most important designers during concept development are the children themselves. We worked with a wonderful, dedicated Children’s Advisory Group, Year 6 classes and children with a variety of additional needs to help us design, develop and test the experience, ensuring it was as fun and engaging as knew it had to be in order to succeed. In addition to contributing their brilliant and bonkers ideas, they were also invited to challenge anything that felt boring - a task they accepted with glee!

Through many months of iterative creative development and testing, including co-creating within online worlds such as Roblox, every narrative beat, character interaction and game mechanic was developed and tested in partnership with these groups. The Keeper of Paintings took shape, with its young designers taking the lead and earning a genuine sense of ownership and connection with their wonderful game.

Cutting Edge AI

Powering the experience is a custom built AI ‘archive engine’. Using computer vision techniques, the app is able to instantly recognise the paintings. Not only does this provide a smooth and engaging user experience, but it also frees up the kids to choose any room in which to continue their quest, giving them agency and control of their adventure.

To further simplify the user experience, the painting detection and AR elements are seamlessly integrated into a chat interface through a ‘Keeper’s Eyeglass’, creating one of the most natural, intuitive and frictionless immersive mobile experiences possible.

Connecting With The Collection

AR is an extremely powerful way to connect people to place, but it needs to be used sparingly. In all of our projects we keep our focus on fostering interaction between the user, the place they are in and the people they are with. The digital experience is the means, but very rarely the end in itself, and that means lowering the device or even putting it away at regular intervals.

In this case, we introduce Keeper "Skill Cards" at various points of the journey, which effectively time the app out whilst providing the child with relevant tasks for their current room such as "Find your favourite painting and tell your group why you like it" or "Which do you think is the noisiest painting?". This creates a rhythm to the game that ensures the child's experience is ultimately about the Gallery itself, and not just the screen of their device.

Inclusivity

Accessibility and inclusivity are key to every 1UP experience, and for The Keeper of Paintings we were fortunate to engage the services of Open Inclusion, the inclusive research and solutions consultancy. Following on-site user testing with groups of children with disabilities, they empowered us with insights and actions which led to features such as contrast variations, font types and sizes, and even speed of text appearance, all of which have led to a deeply inclusive experience.

Plan Your Visit

The Keeper of Paintings app is suitable for ages 7–11 and is entering its third year at The National Gallery. To plan your trip, please visit www.nationalgallery.org.uk/keeper