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Novel experience of Statue-Visitor Interaction and UX design to remark
Junhang Yu
25.05.2021 Berlin
The sign with a code to scan, and the Lion statue not far behind
A statue that talks?
Summer approaching, mobility restrictions in the city getting loosened, and the museums opening again, I got more chances to hang around in the city centre of Berlin and pay a visit to the glorious Museuminsel(museum island). When I was walking by the lion statue in Kolonnadenhof in front of the Alte Nationalgalerie(old national gallery), as I have done many times before, I noticed something unusual - a sign poking out of the bush surrounding the lion, in a casual bubble-like shape, etched with name of the statue, Gauls Löwe, and a QR-code.
At a first glance, I thought, it would be no extraordinary than any tedious chunks of description text of the statue. It's better to read something than nothing anyway. But soon in the next second I discovered, beneath the Gauls Löwe, it said, ruft dich an, which means, the lion is calling you! A talking statue? Humm, that would be interesting to give it a try. So I scanned the QR code, and wait. (For my dear readers, here's the link. Try it yourself!)
A webpage popped up with two consent buttons written in German and English. The content to agree with looked not the same as what we would usually encounter, the cookie consent, but rather some pre-caution of data usage. It sounds absurd to me because today is the year of 2021 and does anyone interested in scanning this code do care about such tiny bit of 2.9MB of data? I don't think it's even necessary to get a consent at this stage. Since I was not so confident with my German so I tapped the I agree button without any further consideration. But later I when I was reflecting upon the experience, I realised that it was a fairly smart design. I'll mark it here and explain in the end.
The two consent buttons
The "call" that I received
A call from the lion!
Da dala da-dali-dala... The famous iPhone's Marimba ringtone rang and a coming-call page popped up on my phone. Wow there's a "real" call from Gaul's Lion! But my phone is an Android phone so I instantly figured out that it was just a trick from the website. It was a bit sad that I wasn't surprised that much. I guess it would be absolutely dramatic when a true iPhone user received such call. I'd wish that the developers can at least let the lion distinguish the logged-on device's OS, so that the Marimba ringtone would never awkwardly come out of an Android device.
As I "picked up" the phone, the lion roared from the other side, "Roar!" Yes, the lion, or the dubber, literally said, "Roar!". He started introducing himself and his creator. It was a brief story of how Gaul, a shy yet stubbon guy, stood out as an animal sculptor in the early 20th century who captures the pure form of an animal and excluded any of its symbolic allusions, which was not the main stream at his time. At the end of the call, the lion invited the listener to step onto the second floor of the gallery building and watch him from another different perspective, where you will meet his gaze, calm and firm.
The statue itself, which was made of bronze, of course, did not move or talk at all. To put short, the interaction could be simply seen as an audio guide from the website, but in the form of a phone call, where the lion speaks as if he's been long waiting for someone to hear his centuries-old story. The script was concise, the story fascinating and the tongue humorous. The only little flaw was that the voice-over literally read the word "roar" instead of cutting in a piece of real lion roaring recording, just like what we had always been expecting from the MGM's famous Leo the lion at the beginning of the film. But I have to remark that, it indeed gave me an illusion as if the bronze lion really opened his mouth and talked!
The story behind
After the call, I was presented with another two options, either to listen again, or read more. I tapped on read more as I wanted to discover which team had presented this wonderful experience of statue-visitor interaction. It turned out that is was brought to Berlin by a Danish team. The team originally implemented their projects in Copenhagen and they have spread it into several major cities in the world. From 2015 till now, 7 statues in Berlin have been brought back to life and can talk with you through phone call.
The idea of making a statue alive and talk was sparkled during a walk of the founder and film maker David Peter Fox, in the King's Garden in Copenhagen with his two kids. On their way, they saw several statues of historical figures, including the famous fairytale author Anderson. "This led me to wonder how I could tell people the story behind each statue as they passed it by", said Fox. Fox initially tried with film making, which is his expertise, but eventually he found that it was still a conventional way of story-telling, and to let the statues talk with their own voice would be much more "simple and straightforward". And now, visitors just need to scan the codes and then the statues will tell the sotries of themselves.
The website of Talking Statue Berlin
The highlight UX design - Sprichst du Deutsch?
Remeber the smart design I mentioned above? Why the two seemingly unnecessary buttons is actually a very thoughtful design? It was not until when I visited their website written in German that I realised, the lion is actually bilingual! Since I'm in Berlin Germany, the Lion must speaks German, of course. But how did he found out that the listener would like to hear the story in English, given there's no explicit option of language options? He didn't even ask me! The answer lies in that, the choice has been already made by the visitor, at the moment he/she tapped on EITHER BUTTON.
On a wbepage, when we want to switch the language, we usually go to the upper corner and find that little national flag representing our preferred language. This normally takes a few seconds and often interrupts the experience. We have to make the choice anyway. But here, the consent page(which was a bit annoying in terms of the overall experience. But if you are in EU, the cookie consent has become part of your everyday life because you always encounter them when landing on a new page) somehow plays the role of selecting languages, without visitors' specific awareness. If you are a German speaker, tapping on Ich stimme zu would be so natural like any daily practice. And if you don't understand German, or not so confident with your German, then the button written in English would be your only choice. By not asking explicitly and abruptly, or leaving the users to find that language switching button hidden in the corner by themselves, the two consent buttons played a perfect role in helping listeners deciding which language they preferred to hear. Such design also avoided using sole national flag representing one language, bucause more than one countries speak German or English as their mother-tone, isn't it? Soon later my guess was proved right as I reloaded the webpage and pressed the Ich stimme zu button, the Lion started talking in German.
As many designers may say, a good UX design is usually something unnoticeable. Unlike a piece of delicate handcraft or an architectural masterpiece, which often draw attention and applause from the spectators, a good experience design would only cater for the users in a silent and reliable way. That's maybe the reason why I'd only realised it was a good design that late.
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