The Story of the Markham Car Collection: A Cross-Platform Panoramic Tour of Contested Heritage

In this article, we share our experiences of using digital technologies and various media to present historical narratives of a museum object collection aiming to provide an engaging experience on multiple platforms. Based on P. Joseph’s article, Dawson presented multiple interpretations and historical views of the Markham car collection across various platforms using multimedia resources. Through her creative production, she explored how to use cylindrical panoramas and rich media to offer new ways of telling the controversial story of the contested heritage of a museum’s veteran and vintage car collection. The production’s usability was investigated involving five experts before it was published online and the general users’ experience was investigated. In this article, we present an important component of findings which indicates that virtual panorama tours featuring multimedia elements could be successful in attracting new audiences and that using this type of storytelling technique can be effective in the museum sector. The storyteller panorama tour presented here may stimulate GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) professionals to think of new approaches, implement new strategies or services to engage their audiences more effectively. The research may ameliorate the education of future professionals as well

Beyond virtual cultural tourism: history-living experiences with cinematic virtual reality

Virtual reality offers unprecedented opportunities for creating cultural tourism experiences that tell visitors emotionally engaging stories about the past.  This paper focuses onthe latest frontier of immersive storytelling rivalling feature films, cinematic virtual reality, which can immerse users into 360-degree films making them feel like living the story. Through a qualitative analysis of five projects, this paper explores how this new media form has been applied for cultural heritage storytelling and analyses the reactions of users to the historyliving experiences with an emphasis on their emotional responses. Based on the findings of the analysis, implications are discussed for the design of VR experiences in cultural tourism

The power of immersive technologies: a sociopsychological analysis of the relationship between immersive environments, storytelling, sentiment, and the impact on user experience

This dissertation initially focused on exploring the potential of immersive technologies for the distant future. However, the emergence of the COVID-19 virus in late 2019 disrupted the world, causing a pause in many areas. Nevertheless, the butterfly effect of the pandemic spurred the development of immersive technologies, resulting in the rise of the metaverse, web3, non-fungible tokens (NFT), and avatars, which are gaining increasing popularity. The excitement for the metaverse is growing in both academia and industry, leading to new avenues of research, digital marketing, video games, tourism, and social media. This dissertation explores this rapidly emerging technological revolution and its effects on user experience (UX)