Humanizing Artifacts: An Educational Game For Cultural Heritage Artifacts and History Using Generative AI
Fengsen Gao, Ke Fang, Wai Kin Chan · 2024
Artifacts are vivid carriers of history and culture. Current applications of cultural heritage (CH) education present knowledge from a third-person perspective, potentially overlooking the emotional connection between users and artifacts. This paper introduces the concept of "Knowledge Actor", which humanizes artifacts, making them natural first-person narrators of knowledge. For instance, in the game, the glazed porcelain artifact is humanized as a boy. Players evoke his memories and advance the game using key information. To gather key information, players talk with ores to solve the creation puzzle or to the map to get location details, simultaneously deducing, acquiring, and memorizing knowledge. The humanized design and generative AI capabilities seamlessly integrate puzzle-solving gameplay with educational objectives. Experimental results indicate this game design fosters emotional connections between users and artifacts, enhances learning outcomes, and improves the game experience. This paper explores new directions of humanized design and generative AI in CH education.