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Exploring the Next Phase of Situated and Interactive Docents for XR Exhibitions: From the Perspective of Knowledge Delivery
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction
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This paper aims to provide new insight into creating authentic Web-based virtual museum experiences by exploring positive and negative elements of the experiences of Web-based virtual museum visits performed by young (Generation Z) visitors. The Qualitative Diary Research (QDR) method was applied, encompassing 107 visits of web-based virtual museums from different countries. Results reveal that the visitors’ orientation and moving, the technology used in virtual museums, and virtual exhibition and artefacts represent crucial factors for satisfaction. Time flexibility and lack of cost contribute to a better virtual museum experience. The absence of people in virtual museums and the lack of services such as museum e-shops and entertainment were found to be harmful elements in contributing to the better virtual museum experience. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that offers insights into Generation Z experiences of different Web-based virtual museums.
This article shows the importance of using the connect the dots research method for generating innovation concepts.
Museums are traditionally considered learning environments and are ordinarily used for non-formal education. Physical museums, while being irreplaceable, are limited to a physical space, requiring mobility and physical presence. In addition, traditional exhibitions are not designed for interaction and physical exploration of artefacts. With the focus being shifted from museum exhibits to visitors’ experience, utilization of emerging technologies and co-creation of virtual museums not only helps in preservation of cultural heritage, but enhances the dissemination, engagement and experience, while addressing the mobility and the plurality of voices and perspectives represented. In this work, we designed and developed the School House Virtual Museum with tangible user interfaces based on participatory, interdisciplinary and co-creative methods with students and a larger community of researchers, artists and practitioners working on heritage and memory. In a user study with 62 participants, usability and user experience were explored and the potential contribution of such virtual museums to learning, based on critical, cross-disciplinary and participatory dialogue, both in cultural and educational institutions/programs has been investigated. The results have confirmed that the system has been well designed and developed, and the user experience was largely positive. The responses from educators and students confirmed that the application holds potential as a learning and education tool in either museums, schools, or when used independently.
In the digital information world, visualizing information in public spaces has been implemented in various formats and for application contexts such as advertisement, useful information provision, and provision of critical information in the cases of accidents, natural disasters, etc. Among the different types of information displays, in this research work, the focus is given to the ones that extend the experience of people visiting cultural heritage institutions. To this end, the design and implementation of an interactive display case that aims to overcome the “non-touch policy” of museums are presented. This novel display allows visitors to get engaged with artifacts and information through touch-based interaction with the ambition to extend the target audience and impact of museum content. The conducted study demonstrates that the interactive display case is an effective solution for providing relevant information to visitors, enhancing their engagement with exhibits, and improving their overall experience. The proposed solution is user-friendly, engaging, and informative, making it ideal for museums and other public exhibit spaces.
This editorial was written for the CALICO Journal Special Issue on XR and language learning
Museum artifacts are the main way for visitors to experience and learn about cultural heritage. Augmented reality (AR) allows for high interactivity and is increasingly applied in museums to improve tourists’ experience and learning. It also supports the extension of museum experience to outside of the physical museum space, contributing to the visiting trajectory and takeaway experience. In this paper, we present our design of two tangible AR interfaces for cultural artifacts: Postcard AR and CubeMuseum AR, followed by three user studies that evaluate and optimize the design. In Study 1, we conducted a within-subjects study (N = 24) that compares the two AR interfaces with a baseline condition (Leaflet). Our results demonstrate the positive effects of tangible AR interfaces on users’ motivation and engagement in learning cultural heritage. In Study 2, we further explored how to optimize CubeMuseum AR by adopting a user-centered design approach. Through the analysis of expert interviews (N = 7) and an online survey (N = 207), the results specify a series of requirements and design guidelines for tangible AR interfaces to be used as a learning tool and a hybrid gift. Based on the findings, the design of the CubeMuseum AR was optimized and evaluated in Study 3. A between-subjects user study was conducted (N = 32) to compare the optimized design with the initial design. The results verified the positive effects of gamified tangible AR interfaces on users’ motivation, engagement, and performance in learning cultural heritage. We present our design and evaluation results, and discuss the implications of designing tangible AR interfaces for cultural heritage learning and museum gifting.
Interactive digital exhibits (IDEs) in science museums are widely used to improve visitor engagement. The human–computer interaction characteristics of such exhibits play a key role in holding the attention of visitors, especially children. To determine these characteristics of IDEs and their effects on child engagement, 60 representative digital exhibits in two science museums were selected and analyzed, and eight characteristics were identified and scored. The holding time of the children was measured at each exhibit, and the average holding time (AHT) across exhibits was calculated. Then, the correlations between the IDE characteristics and engagement levels of the children were evaluated. The results show that three characteristics, namely, competition, social interaction, and visitor control, of IDEs have important effects on child engagement. The reasons for these results were also analyzed, and design considerations and principles for IDEs were identified.
Museums have shown keen interest in providing XR experiences, in particular, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), as part of their exhibitions. However, little is known about how visitors feel about such experiences and how exposure to them affects visitor interest in topics. In this study, the authors conduct a pre/post-usage survey among visitors at a museum with a VR installation. Four research models were compared to determine the most suitable model for studying gratifications. Our results showed that visitors expect to be entertained, yet they are less entertained than expected. VR provides positive learning effects, and scholars can rely on post-usage measures to assess the experience.
Immersive technologies (Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality) are widely used in cultural heritage for communication, enhancing the visiting experience, and improving learning and understanding. Immersive technologies have found their way into museums and other cultural spaces in various forms and shapes. This work aims to recognize the main forms of immersive technologies and applications in museums and other cultural spaces and provide information on the employed methods, technologies, equipment, and software solutions by conducting a systematic literature review aligned with the PRISMA guidelines. The analyzed literature was collected through a focused search in scientific databases (Scopus, ACM, and IEEE). The relevance to the subject was assessed based on the main technological focus (VR/AR/MR or XR) and the employed technologies. Methods and approaches for realizing their applications were studied and discussed. Thirteen articles were found to meet the selection criteria, of which two focus on VR, six are on AR, two are on Audio-AR, and three are on MR. The results showed that Augmented Reality solutions are preferred for on-site use; Mixed Reality applications started to emerge as Mixed Reality hardware technology became available and Virtual Reality despite being criticized for isolating visitors. The findings cover the existing gap in recent literature and can reveal a set of good practices and innovative ideas for future applications.
Online virtual museum tours combine museum authority and an academic approach with the diversity and interactivity of online resources; such tours have become an essential resource for online scientific research and education. Many important museums around the world are developing this type of online service. Comprehensive evaluation of such tours is, however, urgently needed to ensure effectiveness. This paper establishes a heuristic evaluation scale based on the literature. Taking the online virtual tour of the Exhibition of Architecture of the Forbidden City as a case study, confirmatory factor analysis was then carried out to improve the scale. Interviews were conducted to discuss and analyze the research results. The developed evaluation scale has four dimensions: authenticity, interaction, navigation, and learning. The results from the case study showed, first, that the exhibition had visual authenticity, but the behavioral authenticity was insufficient; second, the exhibition was generally interactive, but this aspect could be improved by enriching the links; third, the lack of effective navigation design for the exhibit was the main factor affecting experience quality. Fourth, the exhibition was informative and supported learning, but needs further improvement to the quantity and quality of information provided. Finally, the interviews revealed that the online exhibition did not entirely support people of different ages and abilities, so it needs further improvement to be wholly inclusive.
Studies in the virtual heritage (VH) domain identify collaboration (social interaction), engagement, and a contextual relationship as key elements of interaction design that influence users’ experience and cultural learning in VH applications. The purpose of this study is to validate whether collaboration (social interaction), engaging experience, and a contextual relationship enhance cultural learning in a collaborative and multi-modal mixed reality (MR) heritage environment. To this end, we have designed and implemented a cloud-based collaborative and multi-modal MR application aiming at enhancing user experience and cultural learning in museums. A conceptual model was proposed based on collaboration, engagement, and relationship in the context of MR experience. The MR application was then evaluated at the Western Australian Shipwrecks Museum by experts, archaeologists, and curators from the gallery and the Western Australian Museum. Questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and observation were used to collect data. The results suggest that integrating collaborative and multi-modal interaction methods with MR technology facilitates enhanced cultural learning in VH.
Designing audience-centric digital displays can be beneficial for facilitating cultural heritage learning. Using digital technologies, we investigated what would work for twenty-first-century audiences by looking at audience-centricity in terms of personal narratives. The research explored the narrative engagement of audiences after their virtual journey to a Virtual Reality environment titled ‘Sanjiangkou’, an ∼800 year old cultural heritage site in Ningbo, China. We adopted Lambert’s (2013) framework of digital storytelling and used VR technologies for developing the virtual cultural heritage site. A total of 61 participants experienced the virtual journey at the NVIDIA Joint-Lab on Mixed Reality at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Four types of details were extracted from the narratives: Attractive Details, Reflective Details, Connective Details, and Elaborative Details. The article proposes a roadmap for designing audience-centric experiences for qualitative cultural heritage learning, and engaging audiences in the participatory process of the adoption of digital technologies.
The impact of the COVID‐19 Crisis on museums and galleries has been paramount, with the sector taking on long‐term recovery plans. This paper examines this crisis in the context of temporary exhibition programmes of UK museums, studying online content for 21 museums with exhibitions due to open between March and June 2020. Analysis was conducted, noting how COVID was considered, how content was presented, and discussing the emerging themes of access, embodiment, and human connection. In considering these results in the context of wider digital heritage literature, several questions are raised in terms of how digital content is conceptualised, presented, and valued. At a crucial turning point in the sector, these aspects will need to be considered as museums and galleries continue to adapt in light of a post‐COVID world where practices, both digital and physical, will undoubtedly shift.
With the ever-advancing availability of digitized museum artifacts, the question of how to make the vast collection of exhibits accessible and explorable beyond what museums traditionally offer via their websites and exposed databases has recently gained increased attention. This research work introduces the Invisible Museum: a user-centric platform that allows users to create interactive and immersive virtual 3D/VR exhibitions using a unified collaborative authoring environment. The platform itself was designed following a Human-Centered Design approach, with the active participation of museum curators and end-users. Content representation adheres to domain standards such as International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums (CIDOC-CRM) and the Europeana Data Model and exploits state-of-the-art deep learning technologies to assist the curators by generating ontology bindings for textual data. The platform enables the formulation and semantic representation of narratives that guide storytelling experiences and bind the presented artifacts with their socio-historic context. Main contributions are pertinent to the fields of (a) user-designed dynamic virtual exhibitions, (b) personalized suggestions and exhibition tours, (c) visualization in web-based 3D/VR technologies, and (d) immersive navigation and interaction. The Invisible Museum has been evaluated using a combination of different methodologies, ensuring the delivery of a high-quality user experience, leading to valuable lessons learned, which are discussed in the article.
The past few years have seen an increase in the use of virtual reality (VR) in museum environments in an attempt for museums to embrace technological innovations and adapt to the challenges of the digital era. While there are studies that examine the advantages of VR in museums and visitors’ experiences with it, there are no studies examining the experiences of museum professionals who are responsible for a museum’s objects and narratives. The aim of this paper is to explore the practices, experiences, and perceptions of museum professionals on the use of VR technology in museums, their perceived advantages and challenges of such technologies, and their vision for the future of technology in museums. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of interviews with museum professionals from a number of countries around the world who worked with particular VR projects in their own institutions. The ultimate aim is to offer a more critical and holistic examination and assessment of the use of VR in museums and provide suggestions for designing and developing VR projects in the future.
One of the most challenging tasks in Extended Reality based environments is the creation of realistic, interactive and attractive simulation with personalised content, without overlooking the main purpose of the system, which, in our case, is education. This paper introduces the XRLabs platform, which is an Extended Reality platform to assist in the training of students in all educational levels, focusing on the use of simulation for wet laboratories. Within this framework, the proposed systems are based on cutting-edge Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality (Extended Reality) technologies. We adopted gamification methods and simulation to enhance the conventional educational practices in laboratories. The highly interactive platform will allow students to enjoy sustainable edutainment experiences, especially in distance/online learning contexts for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
This article explores the affective potential of virtual humans in virtual museum (VM) environments. Three avatars (personifying a curator, a guard, and a visitor, respectively) have been employed as storytellers introducing participants to the emotive story behind a historical sculpture. The emotional responses of a test group have been correlated to a range of factors, namely, the role acted by the virtual storytellers, the subjects’ own stance on cultural heritage, gender, and predispositions towards the sense of presence and affective responses. We review research related to the topic of presence and social presence in VMs, and position our experimental procedure as well as the findings of our study in this context. Theoretical frameworks, such as the Expectancy Violations Theory are used to interpret the key findings, which have not always confirmed the initial hypotheses. The outcome of our study may inform the design of avatars-as-storytellers in VMs on the basis of their affective potential, given the results of the study and, more importantly, the theoretical investigation of the factors, which conditioned the emotional responses observed.
The auditory sense is an intuitive and immersive channel to experience our surroundings, which motivates us to augment our perception of the real world with digital auditory content. We present a wearable audio augmented reality prototype that tracks the user with six degrees of freedom in a known environment, synthesizes 3D sounds, and plays spatialized audio from arbitrary objects to the user. Our prototype is built using head-mounted visual-inertial odometry, a sound simulation engine on a laptop, and off-the-shelf headphones. We demonstrate an application in a gallery scenario in which visitors can hear objects and scenes drawn in the paintings , feeling audiovisually engaged in the depicted surroundings. In a user study involving 26 participants, we observed that the audio-enhanced exhibition improved people's experience, as well as helped them remember more lively details of the artworks.
n recent years, the virtual museum has become a prominent subject again. However, the concept and terminology have existed for a long time, even to a period before the advent of the Internet. The early years of the virtual museum were characterized by multimedia and hypermedia applications on CD-ROM and stand-alone computers. The World Wide Web offered new possibilities for the presentation of museum information online, and thus to reach outside of the museum walls. This lead to a controversial discussion about the nature and the core concept of the virtual museum.
Buildings and urban spaces increasingly incorporate artificial intelligence and new forms of interactivity, raising a wide span of research questions about the future of human experiences with, and within, built environments. We call this emerging area Human-Building Interaction (HBI) and introduce it as an interdisciplinary domain of research interfacing Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with Architecture and Urban Design. HBI seeks to examine the involvement of HCI in studying and steering the evolution of built environments. Therefore, we need to ask foundational questions such as the following: what are the specific attributes of built environments that HCI researchers should take into account when shifting attention and scale from “artefacts” to “environments”? Are architecture and interaction design methods and processes compatible? Concretely, how can a team of interaction designers bring their tools to an architectural project, and collaborate with other stakeholders? Can and will architecture change the theory and practice of HCI? Furthermore, research in HBI should produce knowledge and practical guidelines by experimenting novel design instances that combine architecture and digital interaction. The primary aim of this article is to specify the mission, vision, and scope of research in HBI. As the introductory article to the TOCHI special issue, it also provides a summary of published manuscripts and describes their collective contribution to the development of this field.
An established body of work in CSCW and related communities studies social and cooperative interaction in museums and cultural heritage sites. A separate and growing body of research in these same communities is developing ways to understand the design and use of social media from a curating perspective. A curating perspective focuses on how social media is designed and used by people to develop and manage their own digital archives. This paper uses a cultural heritage museum as the empirical basis and setting along with new information visualization methods we have developed to better integrate these bodies of work and introduce the concept of personal curation; a socio-technical practice in which people collect, edit, and share information using personal information devices and social media as they move through physical environments rich with meaning potential. In doing so this paper makes three contributions. First, it illustrates how to combine a spatial focus on people’s movement and interaction through the physical environment with an analysis of social media use in order to gain a deeper understanding of practices such as personal curation. Second, it shows in greater detail how visitors to museums and cultural heritage sites use and link digital information with physical information to shape others’ understandings of cultural heritage. Third, it suggests how museums and cultural heritage sites may leverage personal curation to support more expansive learning opportunities for visitors.
In this paper, we explored the application of human factor guidelines in personal fabrication. This is useful for several Do-It-Yourself (DIY) scenarios, including users adjusting workstation configurations or designing a desk to fit a single person. We identified a dependency map between the user's anthropometrics, ergonomic pose recommendations, and design dimensions. Based on this, we developed situated and interactive guidelines to assist users in design applications. We applied these guidelines in a Virtual Reality (VR) system that lets users customize their desk and provides real-time feedback and feedforward on pose and design. We evaluated the system with six participants, had each one design a personal desk, fabricated their desks, and let them work on their desks for four hours. The design and evaluation contribute to fabrication tools as it helped users be aware of their pose and ergonomic knowledge, and design for their bodies and needs.
While gaming and storytelling are considered to be common approaches to engage audiences with a museum’s collections, a formal comparison of the two has not been found in literature. While gaming and storytelling are considered to be common approaches to engage audiences with a museum’s collections, a formal comparison of the two has not been found in literature. In this paper, we present the design and comparative study of two distinct interventions, namely a mobile game and a mobile story that were designed to engage a young audience with the exhibit of the local natural history museum. Focusing on the same scientific content derived from the museum’s collection, we compare the effects of both interactive experiences on a group of children. When comparing engagement, enjoyment and learning outcomes, we correlate results with data derived from observations and skin conductance biofeedback. The data collected so far suggest that children are 27% more excited when using the game application compared with the story driven one. Moreover, we find that children’s excitement peaks when encountering selected artefacts presented in the museum exhibit. Finally, children’s learning nearly doubled (44%) when using the game based experience versus the story. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of our findings and by proposing potential future improvements.
In this paper we propose a new direction for design, in the context of the theme “Next Digital Technologies in Arts and Culture”, by employing modern methods based on Interaction Design, Interactive Storytelling and Artificial Intelligence. Focusing on Cultural Heritage, we propose a new paradigm for Museum Experience Design, facilitating on the one hand traditional visual and multimedia communication and, on the other, a new type of interaction with artefacts, in the form of a Storytelling Experience. Museums are increasingly being transformed into hybrid spaces, where virtual (digital) information coexists with tangible artefacts. In this context, “Next Digital Technologies” play a new role, providing methods to increase cultural accessibility and enhance experience. Not only is the goal to convey stories hidden inside artefacts, as well as items or objects connected to them, but it is also to pave the way for the creation of new ones through an interactive museum experience that continues after the museum visit ends. Social sharing, in particular, can greatly increase the value of dissemination.
" In many complex tasks, a remote subject-matter expert may need to assist a local user to guide actions on objects in the local user's environment. However, effective spatial referencing and action demonstration in a remote physical environment can be challenging. We introduce two approaches that use Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) for the remote expert, and AR for the local user, each wearing a stereo head-worn display. Both approaches allow the expert to create and manipulate virtual replicas of physical objects in the local environment to refer to parts of those physical objects and to indicate actions on them. This can be especially useful for parts that are occluded or difficult to access. In one approach, the expert points in 3D to portions of virtual replicas to annotate them. In another approach, the expert demonstrates actions in 3D by manipulating virtual replicas, supported by constraints and annotations. We performed a user study of a 6DOF alignment task, a key operation in many physical task domains, comparing both approaches to an approach in which the expert uses a 2D tablet-based drawing system similar to ones developed for prior work on remote assistance. The study showed the 3D demonstration approach to be faster than the others. In addition, the 3D pointing approach was faster than the 2D tablet in the case of a highly trained expert.
Museums play an important role in shaping social discourses, not only offering economic benefits but also making significant contributions in the development of social and cultural enrichment. In the current dynamic environment, museums face the challenges of innovating and adopting technologies and combining art education with market trends, and this often conflicts with their social mission. This research focuses on the perceptions of a museum’s key stakeholders of the growing trend of virtual technology, using a qualitative case study on a modern and contemporary art museum in Indonesia. The findings reveal that, despite the positive responses of using digital technologies, the museum’s key stakeholders believed that physical-human interaction is still critical in achieving the museum mission as well as in responding to market trends.
Ray-casting is often used for object manipulation that intersects with the ray that uses the intersection between rays extending from the user and a virtual object. In Augmented Reality (AR), ray-casting has been triggered by a single touch event on the screen using smartphone or handheld device. Object selection in AR implemented in a simple single touch experience, which should be easily understandable for users. However, to select or hover the distant object or occluded object becoming one of the issues need to be solved in handheld AR. Besides, to work with real hand gesture for handheld AR may be challenging. Therefore, the ray intersection will be one of the advantages to manipulate virtual object in AR when works with bare hand or freehand gesture. As aiming a ray out of one's hand towards out of reach item is a very abstract interaction, summoning method has been proposed to confirm the object selection. In handheld AR, summoning method has not been explored, this paper aims to explore the summoning method with raycasting in handheld AR using real hand gesture. It also compares the implementation of summoning using touch-based, the conventional method in handheld AR.
In recent years, the exhibition of digitized Cultural Heritage in Virtual Museums has increased, while Cultural Heritage institutions are trying to align with current trends regarding their communication with the audience. In VMs created with 360° panoramas; web 3D VMs and 3D virtual exhibitions created with authoring tools, the visitor-exhibit interactions are usually limited to display information about an exhibit. On the other hand, in Virtual Reality museums visitors get involved in more complex hands-on activities with educational potential. In this paper, we present a theoretical and practical approach that aims to support a deeper understanding of contemporary art for a wide audience. To this end, we suggest a virtual reality museum setting with different types of interactions and experiential activities that highlight the artwork’s main message, and increase the experience’s educational value. The suggested set of activities can be used to create experiences in any virtual museum setting. We present the pedagogical framework of the study and how it is applied in the case of the 2gether VR museum.
Building science employs student-professional interactions to increase the learning and engagement of domain topics. Although these interactions are beneficial to students, labor shortages and automation trends will create barriers to expose students to professionals in the future. One solution is to utilize virtual situated learning contexts for students to experience simulated interactions with virtual professionals. Within these simulations, virtual humans are often used as a vehicle to preserve knowledge and deliver it to students. However, the impact of the fidelity of virtual human appearance on providing knowledge to the students within the building science domain remains unexplored. This paper presents a virtual reality (VR) educational system integrated with digital storytellers and grounded in the building science electrical career path context to explore how virtual human appearance fidelity affects student learning and engagement. A between-subject study was conducted with 42 construction management participants to explore the impact of 3 virtual human appearance fidelity conditions (realistic, modeled, and abstracted virtual human) in terms of student learning, social presence, virtual human persona factors, and topic interest. The findings of this study demonstrated that successful educational outcomes could be achieved with low virtual human appearance fidelity due to the lack of significant differences observed across experimental conditions. Furthermore, the study results did not detect significant differences in students' engagement by increasing the virtual human appearance fidelity. However, students across all experimental conditions reported engagement increments in the topic learned. The increments in student engagement suggest that the virtual human's age and gender are important factors to consider when designing educational interventions. These results contribute to the understanding of how to create virtual humans for building science educational interventions.
Situated visualization is an emerging concept within visualization, in which data is visualized in situ, where it is relevant to people. The concept has gained interest from multiple research communities, including visualization, human-computer interaction (HCI) and augmented reality. This has led to a range of explorations and applications of the concept, however, this early work has focused on the operational aspect of situatedness leading to inconsistent adoption of the concept and terminology. First, we contribute a literature survey in which we analyze 44 papers that explicitly use the term “situated visualization” to provide an overview of the research area, how it defines situated visualization, common application areas and technology used, as well as type of data and type of visualizations. Our survey shows that research on situated visualization has focused on technology-centric approaches that foreground a spatial understanding of situatedness. Secondly, we contribute five perspectives on situatedness (space, time, place, activity, and community) that together expand on the prevalent notion of situatedness in the corpus. We draw from six case studies and prior theoretical developments in HCI. Each perspective develops a generative way of looking at and working with situatedness in design and research. We outline future directions, including considering technology, material and aesthetics, leveraging the perspectives for design, and methods for stronger engagement with target audiences. We conclude with opportunities to consolidate situated visualization research.
We examine the user experience, learning effectiveness, learning behaviors, and learning motivation of 54 young adults in pairs using an immersive virtual reality (IVR) environment and a multi-touch tabletop (MTT) to gain a cultural-historical understanding of the traditional Chinese paintings, Spring Morning in the Han Palace and The Night Revels of Han Xizai respectively. We used mixed methods of knowledge assessments, questionnaires, observation, and interviews to collect and analyze data. The results reveal the IVR environment significantly increased the learning effectiveness and motivation compared to the MTT system, particularly in tasks related to recall of details or spatiality. The IVR design incorporates five learning scenes, and as part of this aspect, the qualitative results indicate users in the IVR condition (1) developed a variety of exploratory and embodied learning strategies; (2) quickly switched their attention to the central learning content, and (3) had equitable interactions in collaborative learning. This research contributes to the potential of IVR learning effectiveness and associated design considerations to learn traditional cultural heritage.
The visualisation of historical information and storytelling in museums is a crucial process for transferring knowledge by directly and simplistically engaging the museum audience. Until recently, technological limitations meant museums were limited to 2D and 3D screen-based information displays. However, advancements in Mixed Reality (MR) devices permit the propagation of a virtual overlay that amalgamates both real-world and virtual environments into a single spectrum. These holographical devices project a 3D space around the user which can be augmented with virtual artefacts, thus potentially changing the traditional museum visitor experience. Few research studies focus on utilising this virtual space to generate objects that do not visually inhibit or distract the operator. Therefore, this article aims to introduce the Ambient Information Visualisation Concept (AIVC) as a new form of storytelling, which can enhance the communication and interactivity between museum visitors and exhibits by measuring and sustaining an optimum spatial environment around the user.
Furthermore, this article investigates the perceptual influences of AIVC on the users’ level of engagement in the museum. This article utilises the Microsoft HoloLens, which is one of the most cutting-edge imagining technologies available to date, in order to deploy the AIVC in a historical storytelling scene “The Battle” in the Egyptian department at The Manchester Museum. This research further seeks to measure the user acceptance of the MR prototype by adopting the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The operational approaches investigated in this study include personal innovativeness (PI), enjoyment (ENJ), usefulness (USF), ease of use (EOU), and willingness of future use (WFU). The population sampling methodology utilised 47 participants from the museum's daily visitors. Results of this research indicate that the WFU construct is the primary outcome of this study, followed by the usefulness factor. Further findings conclude that the majority of users found this technology highly engaging and easy to use. The combination of the proposed system and AIVC in museum storytelling has extensive applications in museums, galleries, and cultural heritage places to enhance the visitor experience.
We examine the experience of Thresholds , a virtual reality (VR) recreation of the world's first photographic exhibition, which has toured to multiple museums. Following the method of performance-led research in the wild, we provide an account of the artist's design rationale and the experiences of visitors as the work toured. We reveal how the overlaying and juxtaposing of virtual and physical spaces established a VR architecture that underpinned the extended user experience. Overlaying was used to layer a virtual model onto a corresponding physical set to deliver physical sensations of touch and movement alongside visual and audio stimuli. Juxtaposition was used to embed the VR installation within the surrounding gallery space at each host museum, dealing with the challenges of entering, exiting, spectating, and invigilating the experience. We propose that museum designers can use these techniques to deliver VR installations that are compelling but also scalable and tourable.
Virtual Reality (VR) has been regarded as a highly effective technology that enables people to gain enjoyable and immersive information about museum collections. Drawing from the four realms of the experience economy, we assume absorptive experiences influence immersive experiences, overall museum VR tour experience, and intention to visit a museum. The results show that all the hypotheses are supported. Furthermore, we compared and tested the proposed model and its rival model (postulating the direct influence of the four realms of the experience economy on museum VR experience) and found that the proposed model is better than the rival model.
Museums are essential to make culture accessible to the mass audience. Human museum guides are important to explain the presented artifacts to the visitors. Recently, museums started to experiment with enhancing exhibitions through mixed reality. It enables cultural exhibitors to provide each visitor with an individualized virtual guide that adapts to the visitor's interests. The effect of the presence and appearance of a virtual museum guide is, however, unclear. In this paper, we compare a real-world guide with a realistic, an abstract, and an audio-only representation of the virtual guide. Participants followed four multimodal presentations while we investigated the effect on comprehension and perceived co-presence. We found that a realistic representation of a virtual guide increases the perceived co-presence and does not adversely affect the comprehension of learning content in mixed reality exhibitions. Insights from our study inform the design of virtual guides for real-world exhibitions.
Democratising the museum is a collection of studies looking at how participation can support museums in the process of becoming more open. We look at the open museum as sharing power with its visitors and stakeholders, but also negotiating professionalism and the role of the museum in a modern society. The societal challenges that inspire this book are on the one hand related to the need to reinvent the notion of democracy in today’s political crisis, to open up the concept and bring it out of the strictly institutional level of politics. On the other hand, the challenges are to do with increasing technologisation of society, networked ways of sharing information, communicating and networking with the public. While often the technologies are seen as the solution to the problem of democratisation, the key thesis of this book is that the way technologies are used are far more important. Hence the concept of participatory technologies is under investigation.
This is a project book. It draws upon a five-year research project called Museum Communication in the 21st Century Information Environment, carried out at the Estonian National Museum. At the same time, it is much more than a book about one museum research project, one team and one participatory initiative. The articles collected here reflect journeys of hope and expectation about museum development, audience engagement and the role of technology in these processes. This book looks at successful ways in which museums use different techniques and technologies to foster museum communication, especially audience participation. But we also talk about some of our failures.
As the Internet and information and communications technology have deeply penetrated our daily lives and entered mainstream culture in our societies, the domain and roles of virtual exhibitions have expanded, making them the centre of museum activities. Such exhibitions are used as a communication medium in various areas, particularly for communication with diverse visitors. Therefore, this study was conducted to understand factors affecting visitor communication and their influences on virtual exhibitions, an interdisciplinary and integrated design field, from a macroscopic perspective through literature review. Factors affecting communication were broadly divided into personal, social, content, and environmental factors, which are individually reviewed in detail. This article develops design guidelines for systematic and theoretically grounded research on virtual exhibitions. The guidelines can also help ensure effective communication between visitors and virtual exhibitions.
We present Mini-Me, an adaptive avatar for enhancing Mixed Reality (MR) remote collaboration between a local Augmented Reality (AR) user and a remote Virtual Reality (VR) user. The Mini-Me avatar represents the VR user's gaze direction and body gestures while it transforms in size and orientation to stay within the AR user's field of view. A user study was conducted to evaluate Mini-Me in two collaborative scenarios: an asymmetric remote expert in VR assisting a local worker in AR, and a symmetric collaboration in urban planning. We found that the presence of the Mini-Me significantly improved Social Presence and the overall experience of MR collaboration.
This paper seeks to define museum communication as a useful concept and process by applying storytelling as a way of identifying museums’ interpretation, relevance and meaning-making focus. Although museums are very familiar with these terms, their impact on how museums communicate has rarely been defined. The paper offers a theoretical definition of museum communication and seeks to implement this in museum practice through the concept of storytelling and the way it influences internal and external museum communication. Defining a clear museum communication requires defining individual practices and approaches at museums as well. For the individual museum this can be approached by stating a clear museum communication definition but more importantly through empirical elements of storytelling. How museums define their communication and form narratives will impact both internal and external practices.
he evolving technologies of the game engines and the Web have reached a level of maturity that enables them to contribute significantly to the long-celebrated blending of culture and education with gaming. In this work, we present DynaMus, an innovative fully dynamic Web-based virtual museum framework that relies entirely on users’ creativity and on the exploitation of the rich content in distributed Web resources. DynaMus is able to connect to popular repositories, such as Europeana and Google, and retrieve content that can be used in creating virtual exhibitions. It exploits modern Web technologies such as open linked data in an attempt to move towards the semantic Web by exploiting the abundance in data availability. DynaMus provides a complete authoring interface, in which anyone can easily create customised virtual exhibitions, while guaranteeing an engaging experience by relying on modern game engine technologies. The concept easily connects to educational settings as has been illustrated by case studies, one of which is presented in this paper.
During the development of exhibition narratives, traditional ‘eyes-on’ exhibitions and interactive ‘hands-on’ exhibitions are currently widely used in museums for delivering information and establishing dialogue. Although ‘hands-on’ exhibitions were heavily promoted on account of being more advanced than ‘eyes-on’ exhibitions in terms of meeting new requirements of the visitors, both types actually represent the same nature of structuralism that do not offer the visitors much flexibility on self-interpretation. In the field of philosophy, the theory of structuralism, being heavily critiqued by its restriction on free reading and understanding, has been widely challenged by the theory of deconstruction since the 1960s. Correspondingly, a new type of exhibition known as ‘minds-on’, as a prototype to offer the visitors genuine freedom of appreciating the exhibition with their own understanding, could be considered as a new frontier of exhibition design.