Experiencing Augmented Reality as an Accessibility Resource in the UNESCO Heritage Site called "La Lonja", Valencia

This paper presents the design of an augmented reality application for the Gothic Silk Market Building called the "Lonja de la Seda" in Valencia (UNESCO Monument Heritage Site, 1996) and the results of the experiments carried out "in-situ" to observe its usability as an accessibility resource. The objective of this project has been to use and validate augmented reality (AR) as a tool to increase the accessibility to the architectural elements of this monumental setting. The AR application aims to resolve the perception issues derived from poor lighting, the distance in relation to the multiple details, access, etc. 145 individuals of different ages and diverse origin, making the visit to the monument with or without guide used the AR application. When visitors had used the application as they wished, interviews were conducted individually in order to receive their feedback about the AR experience. Users enjoyed identifying and selecting the motifs they were going to visualize with the AR tool. In general, the experience was very positively evaluated by participants, promoting a favourable and renewed image of the monument.This project has been carried out in collaboration between the Department of Architectural Graphic Expresion and Labhuman Institute at the Universitat Politècnica de València funded by the Research Program PAID0511 "Nuevas Aplicaciones de las Tecnologías Gráficas para la Mejora de la Sostenibilidad, el Conocimiento y la Accesibilidad al Patrimonio” (Ref. 2786). Besides, the Spanish Ministry Economy and Competitiveness partially supported this work (Project ref. TIN2010-21296-C02-01). It is also necessary to be grateful to the Town Hall of Valencia which has allowed us to carry out the experience in this protected building.Puyuelo Cazorla, M.; Higón Calvet, JL.; Merino Sanjuan, L.; Contero, M. (2013). Experiencing Augmented Reality as an Accessibility Resource in the UNESCO Heritage Site called "La Lonja", Valencia. Elsevier. 25:171-178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2013.11.021S1711782

Enriching the Summer Palace’s cultural experience

Cultural Heritage occurs when visitors tell stories of exceptional experiences at historic sites - after their visit occurs. For the Summer Palace’s directors to create exceptional experiences, exhibition designers must understand how to tell stories that have great meaning to the Summer Palace’s national and international visitors. Our research targets this question – we propose developing innovative and unique storytelling methods through interactive exhibitions throughout the Summer Palace to suspend the visitor’s sense of reality; increasing their sense of flow, suggestion, and engagement. We suggest the Summer Palace for this research project due to its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site seeking to increase its international reputation. If directors and exhibition designers understand how advanced technology, including immersive exhibitions and augmented reality, can meet educational, enjoyment, and emotional needs of the Summer Palace’s diverse visitors during festivals and tourist visits, we may increase existing visitor’s engagement, and capture new tourist groups - who previously ignored the Palace. We hope our work shall ultimately contribute to making the Summer Palace China’s foremost Cultural Heritage Site and festival epicentre

Mobile AR for Cultural Heritage Site towards Enjoyable Informal Learning: A Revised Conceptual Model

The need of visitor has been changed in tourism which is to learn and have meaningful experience. However, Mobile Augmented Reality technology that caters enjoyable informal learning in cultural heritage site is still limited. Therefore a conceptual model is proposed to guide developers in developing such mobile AR application to promote enjoyable informal learning. This article describes the proposed model which is called as a ‘conceptual model of mobile AR for cultural heritage site towards enjoyable informal learning’. Expert review and focus group discussion methods were conducted to evaluate the proposed model are also explained in this article. Prior to the evaluation process, a field study was also conducted to discover novel components of enjoyable informal learning content in cultural heritage site. The results of all methods conducted were contributed to the development of a conceptual model. The conceptual model consists of two levels which in the first level; it contains three main components (mobile AR technology, enjoyable informal learning, and cultural heritage site) and in the second level of the model provides detail information which contains the elements of each component

Online Synchronous Model of Interpretive Sustainable Guiding in Heritage Sites: The Avatar Tourist Visit

[EN] The health crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic created an unprecedented social situation. In the most critical moments, tourism activities were cancelled or reduced to their minimum operation, creating an extreme situation of separation of a country¿s heritage from residents and tourists. The objective of this work is to propose new options and strategies to reconnect the public with heritage under any circumstance and, at the same time, offer tourism services in healthy, secure conditions. Thus, live-streaming experiences of online interpretative tourist guidance were developed in heritage spaces; those visits were led by real guide-interpreters in a real environment and transmitted for remote visitors. We have called this visiting model the ¿Avatar Tourist Visit¿. It is based on tools associated with Heritage Interpretation, Interpersonal Communication, Filmmaking and Audio-Visual Language, and Information and Communication Technologies. The methodological development of this tool was based on Design Sciences Research as the creation of a new procedure was pursued. The result is a sustainable, immersive, interactive, inclusive, unique, and resilient tourism product designed not only for times of crisis but also to connect the public with heritage at all times and ensure universal access to it. In addition, this activity constitutes a marketable experience as a specialized and customizable tourist product.This study is part of the research project "Analisis y desarrollo de la integracion HBIM en SIG para la creacion de un protocolo de planificacion turistica del patrimonio cultural de un destino" (ref. PID2020-119088RB-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; and has also been funded by Generalitat Valenciana and Fondo Social Europeo through the postdoctoral program APOSTD/2020/004.Viñals Blasco, MJ.; Gilabert Sansalvador, L.; Sanasaryan, A.; Teruel Serrano, MD.; Darés, M. (2021). Online Synchronous Model of Interpretive Sustainable Guiding in Heritage Sites: The Avatar Tourist Visit. Sustainability. 13(13):1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137179118131

User experience on enjoyable informal learning via mobile AR: Development and evaluation

Mobile augmented reality is recommended to be implemented at cultural heritage sites to enhance visitor’s experience.Visitors enable to learn informally about the cultural items, values, and history of the sites while enjoying their visit. However, at our initial study, it is found that such mobile augmented reality has not been implemented atcultural heritage sites in South-East Asia region including Malaysia. Therefore, this study proposed a mobile augmented reality application, named as AR@Melaka, has been successfully developed to help visitor to have enjoyable informal learning in Melaka heritage sites.This paper describes the design and development of AR@Melaka including designing the user interfaces and creating content.In addition, the evaluation results of AR@Melaka are also presented.There were 200respondents involved, and majority of them agreed having an experience ofafter using the application.In summary this study shows the importance of enjoyable informal learning experience for visitors at cultural heritage sites

Enhancing visitor experience in museums and monuments through technology: professionals perception and cases in other countrie

This thesis intends to analyze the use of technology in museums and monuments to strengthen the tourism experience, with emphasis on Portugal. Previous literature tackles this subject on a broad basis, an issue this thesis addresses. Hence, how can Turismo de Portugal enhance visitor experience in museums and monuments through technology? This paper advocates for Portugal’s museums and monuments to explore the value of technology in today’s world. By interviewing museum related professionals, this paper demonstrates there is demand for technological enhancements within cultural spaces from providers. The significance of this study is that it informs the theoretical understanding that professionals want to execute technology in cultural sites

IMPACT OF VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE ON ACCESSIBILITY OF CULTURAL HERITAGE

Accessibility plays a main role among the aspects that contribute to the conservation of Cultural Heritage sites. Seismic stability, fragility of the artefacts, conflicts, deterioration, natural disasters, climate change and visitors’ impact are only some of the possible causes that might lead to the inaccessibility of a heritage site for both researchers and visitors.The increasing potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the conservation field has resulted in the development of Augmented and Virtual reality (AR and VR) experiences. These ones can be very effective for what concerns the description of the visual experience, but also improve the understanding of a site and even became analytic research tools.This paper presents an inaccessible Buddhist temple in the Myanmar city of Bagan as a case study for the realization of a VR experience that aims at providing accessibility to knowledge and therefore a better understanding of the cultural value. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the VR for this purpose, a user study has been conducted and its results are reported.</p

Augmented Reality in Smart Cities: A Multimedia Approach

Intro: This paper presents an advance overview of utilizing Augmented Reality (AR) in smart cities. Although, Smart cities contain six major aspects (mobility, economy, government, environment, living, and people), this paper focuses on three of them that have more potentiality in using virtual assistant (mobility, environment, and living). Methodology: Presenting a state-of-the-art review studies undertake between 2013 and 2017, which is driven from highlighted libraries is the aim of this research. After exact examine, 15 emphasized studies are chosen to divide the main aspects while 120 selective articles are supporting them. These categorizes have been critically compared with an aim, method and chronological perspectives. Results: First of All, Environmental issues (Museums industry) attract the most attention of researchers while the living issues (maintenance) have lower significant compare t latter and mobility (indoor-outdoor navigation) attract the least. Moreover, a close connection between academic and industry fields is going to be created. Conclusions: it has been concluded that, because of economic advantages, utilizing AR technology has improved in the tourism and maintenance. Moreover, until now, most of studies try to prove their concept rather than illustrate well stablished analytic approach. Because of hardware and software improvement, it is essential for the future studies to evaluate their hypothesis in a real urban context

Changing Priorities. 3rd VIBRArch

In order to warrant a good present and future for people around the planet and to safe the care of the planet itself, research in architecture has to release all its potential. Therefore, the aims of the 3rd Valencia International Biennial of Research in Architecture are: - To focus on the most relevant needs of humanity and the planet and what architectural research can do for solving them. - To assess the evolution of architectural research in traditionally matters of interest and the current state of these popular and widespread topics. - To deepen in the current state and findings of architectural research on subjects akin to post-capitalism and frequently related to equal opportunities and the universal right to personal development and happiness. - To showcase all kinds of research related to the new and holistic concept of sustainability and to climate emergency. - To place in the spotlight those ongoing works or available proposals developed by architectural researchers in order to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. - To underline the capacity of architectural research to develop resiliency and abilities to adapt itself to changing priorities. - To highlight architecture's multidisciplinarity as a melting pot of multiple approaches, points of view and expertise. - To open new perspectives for architectural research by promoting the development of multidisciplinary and inter-university networks and research groups. For all that, the 3rd Valencia International Biennial of Research in Architecture is open not only to architects, but also for any academic, practitioner, professional or student with a determination to develop research in architecture or neighboring fields.Cabrera Fausto, I. (2023). Changing Priorities. 3rd VIBRArch. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/VIBRArch2022.2022.1686