I read “Playful engineering: Designing and building art discovery systems” which presents the creation of Artbot, an app that allows users to find new art events in the Boston area by scraping local museums’ websites. What I liked most about Artbot was how it valued serendipitous and playful discovery. The designers were trying to find the right balance of choice: not too much to overwhelm or paralyze a user, but enough to keep them engaged. The creators took inspiration from other platforms, but I would be curious to learn how they knew they found the right balance.

The article ended before Artbot entered the beta-testing process. What research questions were they asking during this? How did that change their design? I wasn’t able to find any followup paper to this one, so if that’s available, please share!

I am also wondering how Artbot could grow to a larger platform. I find that with a number of research projects, it can be tough to fit the final project into a sustainable business model. The article says Artbot could grow to include more museums and more cities. If this were the case, it would need continued support by software developers, even though much automation was designed into the platform. How do the researchers envision Artbot supporting a team of developers?