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The balance of attention: challenges of creating locative cultural storytelling experiences
Abstract
There is a long history of research exploring how augmented and mixed reality systems can be used to support visitors to cultural heritage locations, but the technological or application specific focus of much of this research means that our understanding of how these experiences work is more of a collection of insights, rather than a coherent theory about how the elements of the experience come together. There is a danger that without developing this knowledge further, our systems will be technologically complex, but experientially simplistic. In this paper we explore how one form of mixed reality experience, digital locative storytelling, can impact the experience of place, and in turn how place impacts the experience of story. We have analysed 33 interviews, and 25 participant observations from 12 story deployments at 2 different sites. Our findings confirm that locative storytelling experiences not only impart information to readers, but also help them to rediscover familiar places and see hidden relationships - especially through time. But our findings also show how the success of the experience is reliant on the balance of attention between the virtual and real (the story and the place), and that issues with navigation, social interactions, and technology are problematic because they can disrupt this balance. Digital locative experiences therefore need to be designed carefully in order to create a balance of attention (for example, by aligning the elements of the story with the topology and character of place). We call this a state of Loco-Narrative Harmony, in which place and story are working together and reader attention is balanced, creating an effect that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Bibliographers are trained in the forensics of the material book and consider every material component as a piece of evidence assembled for a ‘Crime Scene Investigation.’ But what if the books themselves could talk? How can we tell research-informed, imaginatively-inspired stories that reanimate objects when confronted with the wholesale destruction of buildings, material goods and business records as a result of war? Drawing on research on the nineteenth-century book trades in Southampton, this paper enacts a new model of situated knowledges to question our current biblioforensic practices. It proposes that archival loss enables book historians to reconsider our relationship with our objects of study and opens the door to new forms of archival encounter as well as new forms of scholarly expression.
In the SPIRIT research project, a location-based Augmented Reality (AR) storytelling application has been developed with the goal to support the imagination of lively historical events at places of cultural significance. We describe a showcase scenario and report on its quantitative and qualitative evaluation, conducted at the Saalburg Roman fort, an outdoor museum site near Bad Homburg in Germany. 107 random voluntary visitors were observed using the app, before filling questionnaires that were then analyzed with SPSS. Specifics of the app include a novel interaction pattern that uses positioning sensors of mobile devices and image recognition to trigger content, featuring transparent videos as ghost-like overlays on the camera image of the environment. Results presented in this paper show that in general, the app was effective and fun to use. Further, there have been differences in the experience of presence concerning the AR representation, as well as in the comprehension and appreciation of the story’s content. Concluding, we discuss influencing parameters on the results and draft hypotheses for future work.
This chapter describes how multimodal serious games can create an immersive experience to enhance the visitor’s experience. The creation of more engaging digital heritage exhibitions by seamlessly integrating technologies to provide a multimodal virtual and augmented reality experience is presented. In engaging exhibitions, participants can switch between different modes of exploring the physical artefacts at the museum and can explore these artefacts further through serious games, user interfaces, virtual reality and augmented reality. Different types of interaction paradigms are also illustrated. Moreover, a framework for multimodal cultural heritage is proposed based on the above technologies. Finally, future research directions for creating new opportunities for scientific research are presented.
The term immersion continues to be applied inconsistently within and across different fields of research connected with the study of virtual reality and interactive media. Moreover, immersion is oftentimes used interchangeably with the terms presence and engagement. This article details a review of existing definitions of immersion originating within the study of video games, virtual environments, and literary works of fiction. Based on this review, a three-dimensional taxonomy of the various conceptualizations of immersion is proposed. That is, the existing definitions of immersion may be broadly divided into three categories, each representing a dimension of the taxonomy: immersion as a property of a system, a subjective response to narrative contents, or a subjective response to challenges within the virtual environment. Finally, four distinct theories of presence are introduced and, based on the established taxonomy, we discuss how the individual theories relate to existing definitions of immersion.
This paper presents a new application in the field of cultural heritage, allowing outdoor site exploration throughout different periods of time, based on Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) technology. The purpose of this research is to allow a free interaction metaphor between users and heritage landmarks, and to enrich their travel experience with important historic facts. We use Metaio SDK to implement this concept within an Android application. We take the specific case of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Cathedral and the Baptistery, all key landmarks from Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa, to prove the usefulness of this paradigm. Five epochs are presented within the application, together with key data about each of them. We assess the usability and engagement of this application by conducting a study with 15 users. The results obtained from the user evaluation show that the concept is not only valid, but also attracting to most of the people. The findings suggest that this kind of applications may attract more visitors while also enhancing their visiting experience.
This paper presents an observational study of eight families engaging with a bespoke tablet experience produced for a space science centre. It documents the various ways in which family members orientate themselves to the usage of technology in this environment, with a particular focus on the work done to manage the tablet and facilitate the engagement of younger children with the narrative of the experience. These findings are considered in the broader context of the need to design experiences that cater for engagement by families as a whole. We conclude by motivating the need for technologies that are robust in light of regular disengagement and by family members, and which provide functionality to directly support facilitation work.
We have experienced rapid development in Augmented Reality (AR) systems and platforms in the world of cultural heritage, namely in cultural settings and historical museums. However, we still face a range of challenges to design an AR system that meets the requirements for an AR installation working autonomously in a cultural heritage setting for an extended duration. This article describes the development of two installations for the visualization of a 3D reconstruction of a castle chapel, running autonomously during open hours in the location of a castle museum. We present a convincing 3D visualization running at interactive frame-rates on modern tablets. In one installation, the tablet is connected to a large screen TV for an immersive experience, and, in another, the tablet is hand-held, thus facilitating translational freedom in the chapel. Both installations allow unsupervised usage during museum visiting hours. Based on in-field observations and on-device logging of application usage, user behavior is analyzed and evaluated. Results indicate that users spent a limited amount of time using the application and did not fully explore the visual area of the chapel. In order for the user to spend more time with the application, additional information must be presented to the user.
The valorization and promotion of worldwide Cultural Heritage by the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies represent nowadays some of the most important research issues with a large variety of potential applications. This challenge is particularly perceived in the Italian scenario, where the artistic patrimony is one of the most diverse and rich of the world, able to attract millions of visitors every year to monuments, archaeological sites and museums. In this paper, we present a general recommendation framework able to uniformly manage heterogeneous multimedia data coming from several web repositories and to provide context-aware recommendation techniques supporting intelligent multimedia services for the users—i.e. dynamic visiting paths for a given environment. Specific applications of our system within the cultural heritage domain are proposed by means of real case studies in the mobile environment related both to an outdoor and indoor scenario, together with some results on user’s satisfaction and system accuracy.
The mobile internet expands the immersive potential of storytelling by introducing electronic games powered by portable, location-aware interfaces. Mobile gaming has become the latest iteration in a decades-long evolution of electronic games that seek to empower the player not just as an avatar in a gameworld but also as a co-author of that gameworld, alongside the game's original designers. Location-aware interfaces allow players to implicate places in the physical world as part of their gameworld (and vice versa) for the first time. In addition to empowering the player as a co-author in the process of constructing a compelling gameworld, then, mobile games eschew linear narrative structures in favor of a cooperative storytelling process that is reliant in part on the player's experience of place. While such an author-player "worldmaking" approach to storytelling is not new, mobile games evolve the process beyond what has yet been possible within the technical and physical constraints of the traditional video gaming format. Location-aware interfaces allow mobile games to extend the worldmaking process beyond the screen and into the physical world, co-opting the player's sensory experiences of real-world places as potential storytelling tools. In our essay, we theorize the unique storytelling potential of mobile games while describing our experience attempting to harness that potential through the design and implementation of our hybrid-reality game University of Death.
The rising popularity of location-based applications and games (LBAGs) that break spatial, temporal, and social boundaries creates new challenges for designers. This paper introduces PLACE, an iterative, mixed-fidelity approach to Prototyping Location, Activities, Collective experience, and Experience over time in LBAGs. PLACE consists of 6 design principles: start small and scale up the fidelity, treat participants as co-designers, test in a representative space, focus on activities more than interfaces, respect authentic social experience, and represent time authentically. The effectiveness of PLACE was evaluated by prototyping Floracaching, a geocaching game for citizen science. This revealed the types of insights that PLACE provides, best practices for implementing PLACE, and how PLACE compares to other prototyping methods.
In this paper, we present and describe the sound design and audio evaluation of Viking Ghost Hunt, a location-aware game based around important historical locations in Dublin, Ireland. We describe the novel approach taken in developing an engaging soundscape for location-aware games in mobile multimedia devices that highlight the importance of spatial audio and reverberation in the subjective sensation of engagement with the game. In particular, we present how the level difference and temporal separation between the direct sound of the sound object, the early reflections and the diffuse reverberant field influence this engagement. Results obtained from this investigation in regards to reverberation and engagement may therefore inform future location-aware sound designs.
Immersive technologies such as virtual environments and augmented reality have a clear potential to support the experiencing of cultural heritage by the large public, complementing the current tools and practices based on tangible goods such as museums, exhibitions, books and visual content. Serious games – videogames designed for educational objectives – appear as a new tool to learn cultural content in an engaging way. In this paper, we will provide an extensive portrait of the current proposition of serious games in the cultural sector, highlighting the educational objectives of games in this domain and analysing the complex relations between genre, context of use, technological solutions and learning effectiveness. We finally identify and discuss the most significant challenges in the design and adoption of educational games in cultural heritage.
We present an approach to the design of mixed reality spaces that aims to create a more harmonized and unified user experience. We refer to these as blended spaces. Blended spaces draw upon a description of physical and digital spaces in terms of the ontology, topology, volatility and agency. By describing physical and digital spaces in these terms we are able to use the process and design principles of conceptual blending to arrive at a design that maximizes the relationships between the spaces. It also guides the development of the touch points between the physical and digital spaces. We discuss the user experience in blended spaces and briefly allude to the significant philosophical implications that blended spaces of the future will have to deal with.
With the growing ubiquity of mobile devices, new ways of sensing context and the emergence of the mobile Web, digital storytelling is escaping the confines of the desktop and intertwinging in new and interesting ways with the physical world. Mobile, location aware, narrative systems are being applied to a range of areas including tour guides, educational tools and interactive fiction. Despite this there is little understanding of how these applications are related or how they link with existing hypertext models and theory.
We argue that location aware narrative systems tend to follow three patterns (canyons, deltas and plains) and that it is possible to represent all of these patterns in a conceptual sculptural hypertext model. Our model builds on a general sculptural mechansim (of pre-conditions and behaviours) to include locality and narrative transitions as first class elements, opening the possibility of standardised viewers, formats, and hybrid stories. We show how existing structures can be mapped onto this conceptual sculptural model, and how narratives defined in the model can take advantage of open data sources and sensed contextual data. To demonstrate this we present the GeoYarn system, a prototype which implements the model to create interactive, location aware narratives, using all three patterns.
Oppegaard and Grigar’s chapter offers a theoretical approach to analyzing digital storytelling for a mobile media age by looking at the creation of a mobile historical tour of Fort Vancouver in Washington State. At the center of their analysis is a theory of intermediality, “a term with expansive edges” that allows Oppegaard and Grigar to
broadly analyze media as working together to transform the ways we experience space. Intermediality, as seen in the use of mobile technologies at the Fort Vancouver site, embraces the notion of media convergence and Oppegaard and Grigar argue that digital storytelling in a pervasive computing era needs to be framed within this lens. The chapter connects these theories to the production of a mobile history platform used to explore Fort Vancouver, a historic site located on the banks of the Columbia River that draws more than 1 million visitors per year. The site is a popular attraction in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area and a major archaeological resource, with more than 2 million artifacts in its collection. Most of those pieces, gathered from more than 50 years of excavations, are kept in warehouses, along with the boxes of documents, drawings and other assorted historical records in storage that, because of severely limited access, obscures the fascinating and multicultural history of the place, once dubbed the “New York of the Pacific.” The fort served as the early end of the Oregon Trail, the regional headquarters of the British Hudson's Bay Company's massive fur empire and the first U.S. Army post in the Northwest. It is a goal of the Fort Vancouver Mobile project to make these materials available through a direct experience with the site with the aid of mobile phones. By drawing from this example of a mobile storytelling platform, the chapter argues that within the context of intermediality, mobile media narratives highlight four relationships in the practice of storytelling: the relationship between content and medium; between people, time, and space; between intersubjective participants; and between people and information. Oppegaard and Grigar analyze these aspects within the context of the Fort Vancouver project while always making their insights applicable to all storytelling platforms that utilize mobile technologies.
a b s t r a c t With the increasing sophistication of mobile computing, a growing interest has been paid to locative media that aim at providing immersive experiences. Location aware narratives are a particular kind of locative media that aim at ''telling stories that unfold in real space''. This paper presents a study that aimed at assessing an underlying hypothesis of location-aware narratives: that the coupling between the physical space and the narrative will result in increased levels of immersion in the narrative. Forty-five individuals experienced a location-aware video narrative in three locations: (a) the original location that contains physical cues from the narrative world, (b) a different location that yet portrays a similar atmosphere, and (c) a location that contains neither physical cues nor a similar atmosphere. Sig-nificant differences were found in users' experiences with the narrative in terms of immersion in the story and mental imagery, but not with regard to feelings of presence, emotional involvement or the memorability of story elements. We reflect on these findings and the implications for the design of location-aware narratives and highlight questions for further research.
The concept of augmented reality audio characterizes techniques where a real sound environment is extended with virtual auditory environments and communications scenarios. A framework is introduced for mobile augmented reality audio (MARA) based on a specific headset configuration where binaural microphone elements are integrated into stereo ear- phones. When microphone signals are routed directly to the earphones, a user is exposed to a pseudoacoustic representation of the real environment. Virtual sound events are then mixed with microphone signals to produce a hybrid, an augmented reality audio representation, for the user. An overview of related technology, literature, and application scenarios is provided. Listening test results with a prototype system show that the proposed system has interesting properties. For example, in some cases listeners found it very difficult to determine which sound sources in an augmented reality audio representation are real and which are virtual.
Technology can play a crucial role in supporting museum visitors and enhancing their overall museum visit experiences. Visitors coming to a museum do not want to be overloaded with information, but to receive the relevant information, learn, and have an overall interesting experience. To serve this goal, a user-friendly and flexible system is needed. The design of such a system poses several challenges that need to be addressed in parallel. The user interface should be intuitive and let the visitors focus on the exhibits, not on the technology. Content and delivery must provide relevant information and at the same time allow visitors to get the level of detail and the perspectives in which they are interested. Personalization may play a key role in providing relevant information to individuals. Yet, since visitors tend to visit the museum in small groups, technology should also contribute to and facilitate during-the-visit communication or post-visit group interaction. The PIL project applied at the Hecht museum extended the research results of the PEACH project and tried to address all of these considerations. Evaluation involving users substantiated several aspects of the design.
The idea of interactional trajectories through interfaces has emerged as a sensitizing concept from recent studies of tangible interfaces and interaction in museums and galleries. We put this concept to work as a lens to reflect on published studies of complex user experiences that extend over space and time and involve multiple roles and interfaces. We develop a conceptual framework in which trajectories explain these user experiences as journeys through hybrid structures, punctuated by transitions, and in which interactivity and collaboration are orchestrated. Our framework is intended to sensitize future studies, help distill craft knowledge into design guidelines and patterns, identify technology requirements, and provide a boundary object to connect HCI with Performance Studies.
The augurscope is a portable mixed reality interface for outdoors. A tripod-mounted display is wheeled to different locations and rotated and tilted to view a virtual environment that is aligned with the physical background. Video from an onboard camera is embedded into this virtual environment. Our design encompasses physical form, interaction and the combination of a GPS receiver, electronic compass, accelerometer and rotary encoder for tracking. An initial application involves the public exploring a medieval castle from the site of its modern replacement. Analysis of use reveals problems with lighting, movement and relating virtual and physical viewpoints, and shows how environmental factors and physical form affect interaction. We suggest that problems might be accommodated by carefully constructing virtual and physical content
In this paper, we describe the situation and factors that lead to "Magic Moments" in mediascape experiences and discuss the implications for how to design these magic moments without them appearing contrived. The distinctive feature of mediascapes is their link to the physical environment and we introduce a framework for Experience Design and describe a set of design heuristics which should extend the field of HCI to encompass aspects of user experience, mobility, the outside environment and facets of the new medium. The findings are primarily based on analysis of public reaction to Riot! 1831, a mediascape in the form of an interactive drama which is based on the actual riots that took place in a public square in Bristol, England in 1831.
Augmented Reality (AR) in the real world is still an unsolved task. Beyond toy systems there are no scalable solutions for outdoor systems that include augmented real-time graphics. The problems are multifold: rendering capacities, tracking problems, data handling and gaps in coverage of tracking and/or graphic data. Our approach introduces an edutainment system that presents an AR system for edutainment. We work around these problems through a stage-based approach for AR. Stages are AR-islands in the real world, where selected functions can be performed. The stages are connected through a navigational system that links them together. For our application domain, an edutainment system, we employ a digital story telling scenario that links the stages semantically. Human computer-interaction in the proposed system is through a multi-modal interface that can be accessed through various devices. The advantage of our stage-based system is scalability and robustness of an outdoor and real-world AR system.
The past decade has witnessed the emergence of a new breed of
human-computer interfaces that combines several human language
technologies to enable humans to converse with computers using spoken
dialogue for information access, creation and processing. In this paper,
we introduce the nature of these conversational interfaces and describe
the underlying human language technologies on which they are based.
After summarizing some of the recent progress in this area around the
world, we discuss development issues faced by researchers creating these
kinds of systems and present some of the ongoing and unmet research
challenges in this field
This chapter explores the integration of affective storytelling in virtual museum (VM) experience. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) affects the way people create, communicate and learn, opens novel opportunities and provides new means for museums to create narratives, express their points and provide quality experiences. Museums’ integration of new media, empowers people to construct their own understandings within an open-ended framework. ICT permeate cultural life, not only by introducing new forms of creative expression and meanings for art, but also by enriching, transforming and enhancing the museum experience. ICT in museums can empower curators to disseminate their ideas and facilitate understandings of the complexities regarding museum exhibits and thus develop aesthetic perception, sensitivities and creativity. In this chapter, the function and cultural significance of storytelling as such is addressed, before venturing into discussing digital storytelling vis-à-vis cultural heritage organizations’ practices. Furthermore, the potential of digital storytelling as fulcrum for rethinking museums as affective spaces in-dialogue with their audiences is delineated.
Digital heritage interpretation is often untethered from traditional museological techniques and environments. As museums and heritage sites explore the potential of locative technologies and ever more sophisticated content-triggering mechanisms for use outdoors, the kinds of questions that digital heritage researchers are able to explore have become increasingly more complex. Researchers now find themselves in the realm of the immersive, the experiential, and the performative. Working closely with their research participants, they navigate ambiguous terrain, including the often unpredictable affective resonances that are the direct consequences of interaction.
This article creates a dialogue between two case studies which, taken together, help to unpack some key methodological and ethical questions emerging from these developments. First, we introduce With New Eyes I See, an itinerant and immersive digital heritage encounter which collapsed boundaries between physical/digital, fact/fiction and past/present. Second, we detail Rock Art on Mobile Phones, a set of dialogic web apps that aimed to explore the potential of mobile devices in delivering heritage interpretation in the rural outdoors.
Looking outward from these case studies, we reflect on how traditional evaluation frameworks are being stretched and strained given the kinds of questions that digital heritage researchers are now exploring. Drawing on vignettes from experience-oriented qualitative studies with participants, we articulate specific common evaluative challenges related to the embodied, multimodal, and transmedial nature of the digital heritage experiences under investigation. In doing so, we make the case for reflexivity as a central and more collaborative feature of research design within this field going forward — paying attention to and advocating the reciprocal relationship between researchers and the heritage experiences that we study.
Multiplayer Interactive Narrative Experiences (MINEs) are interactive authored narratives in which multiple players experience distinct narratives (multiplayer differentiability) and their actions influence the storylines of both themselves and others (inter-player agency). Little research has been done to explore the possibilities of this type of narrative, and no complete model nor system exists. In this paper we introduce a model for MINEs based on sculptural hypertext and describe its implementation in a prototype system: StoryMINE. Then using a number of working narrative scenarios we demonstrate that the model and system supports a variety of inter-player interactions. It is our hope that this system provides a platform for the creation and reading of MINEs, and that this in turn creates opportunities for further research into this novel form of digital storytelling.
Locative narrative systems have been a popular area of research for nearly two decades, but they are often bespoke systems, developed for particular deployments, or to demonstrate novel technologies. This has meant that they are short-lived, the narratives have been constructed by the creators of the system, and that the barrier to creating locative experiences has remained high due to a lack of common tools. We set out to create a platform based on the commonalities of these historic systems, with a focus on hypertext structure, and designed to enable locative based narratives to be created, deployed, and experienced in-the-wild. The result is StoryPlaces, an open source locative hypertext platform and authoring tool designed around a sculptural hypertext engine and built with existing Web technologies. As well as providing an open platform for future development, StoryPlaces also offers novelty in its management of location, including the separation of location and nodes, of descriptions from locations, and of content from pages, as well as being designed to have run-time caching and disconnection resilience. It also advances the state of the art in sculptural hypertext systems delivery through conditional functions, and nested, geographic and temporal conditions. The StoryPlaces platform has been used for the public deployment of over twenty locative narratives, and demonstrates the effectiveness of a general platform for delivering complex locative narrative experiences. In this paper we describe the process of creating the platform and our insights on the design of locative hypertext platforms.
Despite the increasing popularity of locative interactive stories their poetics are poorly understood, meaning that there is little advice or support for locative authors, and few frameworks for critical analysis. The StoryPlaces project has spent two years working with over sixty authors creating locative stories. Through analyzing the stories themselves, and interviewing readers, we have developed a simple writer’s toolkit that highlights the challenges and opportunities offered by locative fiction. In this paper, we describe our approach and outline twelve key pragmatic and aesthetic considerations that we have derived from our experience and analyses. Together these reveal that the main challenge in locative literature lies in aligning the narrative text, the structural logic, and the demands and affordances of the landscape.
In recent years, thematic route planning is gaining popularity in recreational navigation. A growing number of people start to use route-planning services to prepare, ride, explore, and log their activities, with a particular focus on where they want to ride and what they want to see. In the context of cultural heritage, however, route planners still suffer from lack of data and route weighting/scoring mechanisms to achieve end-user satisfaction. In this article, we take advantage of mobile sensing and geotagging (r)evolution to tackle both issues and propose a novel framework for cultural heritage routing on top of RouteYou’s existing recreational navigation platform. Our first improvement focuses on the automatic collection and multimodal enrichment of thematic cultural heritage points of interest. Second, we introduce a weighting procedure for these points of interest and analyze their meta(data) quality and spatial coverage in our route databases. Finally, we present a novel routing algorithm targeted to cultural heritage exploration. Experimental results show that the proposed framework improves cultural heritage POI coverage and quality with respect to traditional recreational navigation routing algorithms. Furthermore, the proposed framework can easily be used in other thematic routing applications due to its generic architecture, making it a widely applicable approach.
The digital revolution is changing the space and the concept of cultural heritage. Furthermore, mobile devices – thanks to geolocalization, augmented/virtual reality, ubiquitous and multimodal interactions – transform the cultural storytelling in a pervasive and ongoing experience crossing seamlessly the boundaries between places of preservation and the historical remains spread in a territory. The paper proposes a design experience which explores the historical layering and evolution of the city of Milano through an interactive time machine. The cultural key chosen to read the historical development is the Manzoni’s novel The Betrothed. According to the literary interpretation, three key periods have been explored along with the evolution of the urban representation. The historical period of the novel (XVII century) corresponding to the map drawn by Cartaro in 1581. Milan at the time of the author (1785–1873) before the Beruto’s master plan that brought down the Spanish walls. And the contemporary city, where the novel itineraries are still recognizable. The time machine – the core features of the app PS 3.0 – is a dynamic way to visualize and experience the geo-referenced point of interests of the cultural paths that allow people to discover past in the present in a spatially-situated interaction.
The introduction in the market of head-mounted displays (HDMs), originally used for gaming, opens the door to a wide set of application fields that could benefit of characteristics, such as immersivity, presence as well as a high degree of realism. In the field of Cultural Heritage, an immersive virtual experience can enhance playfulness and involvement in the fruition of a cultural experience, by determining a more efficient knowledge absorption and retention of the learnt content.
In this work we introduce a prototype of a Serious Game in Cultural Heritage, named HippocraticaCivitasGame, designed and implemented to foster playfulness and learning effectiveness. We also performed an evaluation study to assess users’ perceived immersivity and playability, as well as the effectiveness when analyzing the acquired knowledge about the archaeological site structure and the proposed learning goal.
This paper proposes a novel approach for the fruition of cultural heritage based on the “Augmented Cultural Heritage” paradigm. This expression has been used to describe the improvement to the visit to a Tangible Cultural Site with additional Intangible Cultural Assets like audio recordings or oral testimonies. The proposed approach is applied to the area of the Montagna Pistoiese, Tuscany, Italy: in this case the visit to the site is enriched by providing visitors with oral material coming from the “Anna Buonomini” archive, a collection of audio recordings of high historical and cultural value. The audio files are geo-referenced and associated to a specific position in the area. The user is able to hear a recording only when he/she reaches the specific geographical point associated with the file. The audio is played adaptively with the distance to the point, so as to emulate a real voice coming from the place.
The underwater cultural heritage is an immeasurable archaeological and historical resource with huge, but yet largely unexploited, potentials for the maritime and coastal tourism.
Location-based services, narratives and interactive experiences have a substantial tradition in human–computer interaction. Building on this background, we report the iterative design process, prototyping and evaluation of Seven Stories, a location-based narrative experience. The design includes two novel features that aim to link the user experience more closely to its physical context: visual markers scanning and a narrator. We have evaluated Seven Stories with two studies. Study 1, with 12 participants, was conducted using qualitative methods to assess the overall user experience. Study 2, with 21 participants, was conducted using quantitative methods, to evaluate the role of the markers and narrator as specific design features. Our contribution is to illustrate, through both qualitative and quantitative findings, how these two novel features influence the user experience, and what implications they have for design.
• We report the iterative, user-centred design process of Seven Stories, a location-based narrative experience, evaluated using two studies.
• Study 1, with 12 participants, was based on qualitative methods, assessing the overall experience.
• Study 2, with 21 participants, was based on quantitative methods, analysing the role of visual marker scanning and narrator as specific design features.
• Our contribution is to illustrate, through both qualitative and quantitative findings, how these two features influence the user experience, and what implications they have for the design of future location-based narratives.
Location based narratives are an emerging form of digital storytelling that use location technologies to trigger content on smart devices according to a user's location. In previous work on the Canyons, Deltas and Plains (CDP) model we argued that they are best considered as a form of sculptural hypertext, but sculptural hypertext is a relatively unexplored medium with few examples, and limited critical theory. This means that there is little guidance for authors on what is possible with the medium, and no common authoring tools, both of which impede adoption and experimentation. In this paper we describe our work to tackle this problem by working with creative writing students to create 40 location based sculptural hypertexts using an approach similar to paper-prototyping, and then analysing these for common patterns (structures of nodes, rules, and conditions used for a poetic purpose). We present seven key patterns: Parallel Threads, Gating, Concurrent Nodes, Alternative Nodes, Foldbacks, Phasing, and Unlocking. In doing so we see some overlap with the patterns identified in traditional (calligraphic) hypertext, but in many cases these patterns are particularly suited to sculptural hypertext, and hint at a different poetics for the form. Our findings refine our original CDP model, but also present a starting point for educating writers on how to approach sculptural stories, and form a foundation for future location-based authoring tools.
Based on case studies from a heritage/museum context, I present and illustrate the notion of “spatio-contextual embedding,” which conceptualizes installation designs that augment real objects and environments while keeping these primary focuses of attention. Key for this “embeddedness” is that interaction is contextualized within a meaningful setting, creating relationships between system and environment. While retaining a focus on original objects or environments, it supports user's active engagement and sense making by inviting, enticing, or forcing them to draw connections. At the heart of this is “indexing”: mindful acts of referencing back-and-forth between here and there, connecting objects or representations. Analysis of case studies provides a repertoire of examples of “indexing,” and examples for high- and low-tech installation designs that foster drawing of connections.
Two core values for design underpin the argument: (1) primacy of real objects and environments and (2) supporting human agency. The case examples highlight how technological arrangements may support or hinder indexing activity. This is condensed into potential design strategies. This article contributes to design knowledge on design for human agency, sense making, and mindful engagement with our environment. “Indexing” is relevant beyond the heritage setting domain, as part of HCI design in support of human agency.
Ubiquitous and tangible computing is opening a new panorama for interactive applications in different domains including cultural heritage. To ideate augmented experiences that provide more enjoyable, intrinsically motivating and memorable user experiences, design thinking methods that fuel the imagination and creativity of designers are required. This design can also take profit from software engineering approaches aimed at putting rationality concepts in practice. In this paper we advocate that such complex interactive (eco)systems require a mixed approach where the benefits of both disciplines are taken into account. It is not a question of design thinking versus software engineering, but a challenge to face the process both as people-values-centered and as quality-centered. This was the motivation of the CoDICE (COdesigning DIgital Cultural Encounters) software tool that supports situated, collocated and distributed tasks and adds persistence and traceability to the co-design outcomes so that the design rationale behind the products can be made explicit.
Location-based systems currently represent a suitable solution to enhance cultural experiences inside museums, as they can satisfy visitors' needs through the provision of contextualized contents and services. In this framework, a promising approach to captivate the attention of teenagers - a hard to please target audience - is represented by mobile serious games, such as playful activities aiming to primarily fulfil educational purposes. The use of a mobile digital tool during the visit definitely discloses new opportunities for contextual learning scenarios; however, so far, only a few studies have analysed the impact of different communication approaches on visitors' degree of exploration and acquisition of knowledge. This work aims to enrich this field of research, presenting the conceptual framework; the design principles; and the evaluation results of "Gossip at palace," a location-based mobile game integrating a storytelling approach. The game was developed for an Italian historical residence to communicate its 18th-century history to teenagers, capitalizing on narrative and game mechanics to foster young visitors' motivations to explore the museum and facilitate their meaning-making process. Following a mixed-methods perspective, the article firstly describes to what extent the components of the application were appreciated by teenagers as well as by other visitor segments. Secondly, it provides an insight on the effectiveness of the game in facilitating the acquisition of historical knowledge by participants, enriched by considerations on the methods to be adopted when evaluating mobile learning in informal educational settings. Thirdly, players' degree of use of the digital game throughout the visit is compared to analogous patterns registered for people using a multimedia mobile guide in the same venue. On the one hand, the study pointed out that the game facilitated a wider exploration of the museum; on the other, it highlighted that players mainly gained a superficial knowledge of the proposed contents.
Visitor studies explore human experiences within museums, cultural heritage sites, and other informal learning settings to inform decisions. Smartphones offer novel opportunities for extending the depth and breadth of visitor studies while considerably reducing their cost and their demands on specialist human resources. By enabling the collection of significantly higher volumes of data, they also make possible the application of advanced machine-learning and visualization techniques, potentially leading to the discovery of new patterns and behaviors that cannot be captured by simple descriptive statistics. In this article, we present a principled approach to the use of smartphones for visitor studies, in particular proposing a structured methodology and associated methods that enable its effective use in this context. We discuss specific methodological considerations that have to be addressed for effective data collection, preprocessing, and analysis and identify the limitations in the applicability of these tools using family visits to the London Zoo as a case study. We conclude with a discussion of the wider opportunities afforded by the introduction of smartphones and related technologies and outline the steps toward establishing them as a standard tool for visitor studies.
This article deals with the design and implementation of an immersive installation where users could gesturally navigate around the wreck of Vrouw Maria, a Dutch merchant ship that sank near the Finnish coast in 1771 and was rediscovered in 1999. The installation was built for the Maritime Museum in Kotka, Finland, and is part of the preservation efforts of the wreck, which still remains underwater. In addition to the cultural heritage aspect, the project was an experiment in holistic user-centered design, where several design methods, such as scenarios, role playing and informance, storyboards, and prototyping, were employed throughout the process in order to envision the final product as well as assess their utility in the scope of immersive installations. The approach we have taken and documented here can be used as a starting point for similar projects where archaeological sites are reconstructed virtually and presented, for example, in a museum setting.
Augmented reality is a new technology that merges the virtual and the real worlds and offers important support in all planning processes. Using mobile devices, planning information can be implemented with smart and participative solutions for a dynamic fruition of cultural heritage [Brondi, R., Carrozzino, M., Tecchia, F., & Bergamasco, M. (2012) Mobile augmented reality for cultural dissemination, in: P. Nesi & R. Santucci (Eds), ECLAP 2012 Conference on Information Technologies for Performing Arts, Media and Entertainment, pp. 113–118 (Firenze: Firenze University Press); Hatzelhoffer, L., et al. (2012) Smart City in Practice: Innovation Lab Between Vision and Reality (Jovis). Technologies are important tools because they make a city smart by making concrete contributions to trigger dynamic processes of place-based development. Three important factors improve urban planning fruition: participation in the early stages of listening and co-design; enlightened governance and new technology. This paper (1) presents the actual possibilities and challenges of augmented reality in the field of cultural heritage, (2) describes a simulation of one case study in a neighbourhood in Cagliari (Italy), by proposing customized paths with the aim of promoting cultural tourism and (3) explains the benefits of using augmented reality in touristic and place-based processes based on the case study.
This paper looks at the card metaphor used successfully in the Equator Ambient Wood and Chawton House projects to structure and author content as part of innovative school field trips using wireless and ubiquitous technologies. The framework provided by the metaphor is laid out and observations made as to how it has been used by domain experts in creating educational experiences. The trade-off between formalisation and restricting pedagogy is examined and key benefits that the metaphor provides are given
Because of today's inadequate interaction between tourists, professionals, and citizens, in this paper the simulation of a new form of knowledge management is presented for more effective utilization of cultural heritage sites. The latest technologies allow interaction of previously separate domains of experience: desire, identity, tourism, memory, and marketing. They are the access keys that, starting from the territory, can take the user into other domains, evaluating the entirety of the cultural heritage. In this regard, the paper presents the simulation of a prototype able to go beyond what is currently provided online: tourist paths are offered that are available online and can be downloaded onto mobile devices (smartphones or tablet PCs), thus creating a tour of the local heritage that provides audio-video content. It allows the opportunity to encourage a deeper exploration of cultural heritage.
We apply the HCI concept of trajectories to the design of a sculpture trail. We crafted a trajectory through each sculpture, combining textual and audio instructions to drive directed viewing, movement and touching while listening to accompanying music. We designed key transitions along the way to oscillate between moments of social interaction and isolated personal engagement, and to deliver official interpretation only after visitors had been given the opportunity to make their own. We describe how visitors generally followed our trajectory, engaging with sculptures and making interpretations that sometimes challenged the received interpretation. We relate our findings to discussions of sense-making and design for multiple interpretations, concluding that curators and designers may benefit from considering \'18trajectories of interpretation'.
This study was undertaken to isolate characteristics of interactive exhibits that are particularly effective in attracting and holding the attention of visitors in a science museum. Forty-seven visitors were tracked through two adjacent exhibitions, comprising a total of 61 interactive exhibits. Four exhibit characteristics were identified and examined: technological novelty, user-centeredness, sensory stimulation, and open-endedness. Regression analyses show that two of these characteristics, technological novelty and open-endedness, help to account for the variance in average visitor holding time; these characteristics have positive correlations with the amount of time spent by visitors at exhibits. Nonsignificant results are explained in terms of mitigating environmental and exhibit-related factors. In addition, topics for future study are suggested. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 121–137, 2003
As computing and communications technologies evolve, there is the potential for new forms of digitally orchestrated interactive narratives to emerge. In this process, balanced attention has to be paid to audience ex- perience, creative constraints, and presence and role of the enabling tech- nology. This paper describes the implementation of HopStory, an interac- tive, location-based narrative distributed in space and time, which was de- signed with this balance in mind. In HopStory, cinematic media is housed within wireless sculptures distributed throughout a building. The audience, through physical contact with a sculpture, collects scenes for later viewing. Inspired by the history of the installation space the narrative relates a day in the life of four characters. By binding the story to local time and space and inviting the audience to wander, we amplify the meaning and impact of the HopStory content and introduce an innovative approach to a day-in-the-life story structure.
This paper describes the initial stages for the iLand project, a Location Aware Multimedia Story project that captures and
exposes the rich oral culture and traditions at the Island of Madeira, using the Madeira main city, Funchal, as a setting
to bring a new level of engagement of the audience with the city and its traditional stories. We developed high quality content
to be used in an already existing platform to deliver location aware stories. With the story experience carefully designed,
an evaluation was carried out in order to expose the opportunities where such systems can be improved. Finally we discuss
the results from the evaluation and explain how we will address them in the design of our new system.