Do it together : the effect of curators, designers, and technologists sharing the making of new interactive visitors’ experiences

Tangible interaction offers new ways to engage users with digital systems through material means. We use ubiquitous computing to create reactive spaces and smart objects that seamlessly blend with the surroundings or the exhibition and bridge the gap between the physical and the digital. The technology is intentionally concealed to bring places and stories from the past into the present and create immersive experiences where technology complements heritage (as opposed to compete with it for visitors’ attention). The full integration of technology with the exhibition or heritage requires approaching the design of the visitors’ experience as a collaborative project that combines curatorial, technical and design aspects. As a multi-expertise team, we created, implemented, and evaluated thee concepts: an evocative experience in the trenches and camp of World War I in the Italian Alps; an interactive layer to tell the personal stories of those involved in the changes in The Hague during the Nazi occupation; and a set of multimedia installations to enrich a permanent collection of World War I artillery. The design effort was on both the creation of bespoke devices and the composition of content that was not didactic but open to personal interpretation: curators left traces for visitors to pick up, and when this occurred the experience was deeper and stronger. Our evaluations show that the powerful outcome cannot be ascribed to just one component, technology versus content. One empowers the other: an approach that simultaneously works on interaction and content is essential to make a design that exploits the place or the objects to a powerful final effect. Clearly, this challenges the traditional exhibition design process as curators become creative members of the team in charge of shaping, through the content, the final experience of the visitors. It is then a matter of rethinking not only the technology for heritage, but also the process, and for curators to become more daring with content

Writing Postcards from the Museum: Composing Personalised Tangible Souvenirs

Building a long-lasting personal relationship with visitors by maintaining their engagement after the visit is one of the most challenging endeavours cultural heritage sites face. When successful, this connection fosters new opportunities for the visitor to get in touch with the heritage, e.g. to visit again or to take part in cultural activities. One way to establish a personal connection is via personalisation services that generate souvenirs for the visitors to take away and foster future engagements with the heritage. This paper discusses how the techniques for personalised text generation can be applied to produce post-visit postcards exploiting the interaction logs collected during the museum visit. The personalised postcard summarises the visit, creates a link with what was experienced and suggests further paths for content discovery. A user study conducted over four weeks confirms the appreciation for the personalised postcard and suggests future developments

Audio-based narratives for the trenches of World War I : intertwining stories, places and interaction for an evocative experience

We report in detail the co-design, setup and evaluation of a technological intervention for a complex outdoor heritage site: a World War I fortified camp and trenches located in the natural setting of the Italian Alps. Sound was used as the only means of content delivery as it was considered particularly effective in engaging visitors at an emotional level and had the potential to enhance the physical experience of being at an historical place. The implemented prototype is visitor-aware personalised multi-point auditory narrative system that automatically plays sounds and stories depending on a combination of features such as physical location, visitor proximity and visitor preferences. The curators created for the trail multiple narratives to capture the different voices of the War. The stories are all personal accounts (as opposed to objective and detached reporting of the facts); they were designed to trigger empathy and understanding while leaving the visitors free to interpret the content and the place on the bases of their own understanding and sensitivity. The result is an evocative embodied experience that does not describe the place in a traditional sense, but leaves its interpretation open. It takes visitors beyond the traditional view of heritage as a source of information toward a sensorial experience of feeling the past. A prototype was set up and tested with a group of volunteers showing that a design that carefully combines content design, sound design, tangible and embodied interaction can bring archaeological remains, with very little to see, back to file

Voices from the War: Design as a Means of Understanding the Experience of Visiting Heritage

We use design research to explore ways in which tangible and embodied interaction can be used to create novel experiences of heritage. We identified five design principles and used them to frame the challenge. In collaboration with curators, we co-created an interactive multi-narrative soundscape for the remains of trenches and a fortified camp from World War I. The soundscape is activated by presence and the use of a bespoke device. The design intertwines technology and historical content in context to augment the visitors’ experience of the place in an evocative, personal way. The field trial showed that experimenting with different forms is key, as they have an impact on visitors’ expectations beyond what they experience directly. It also showed the value in simultaneously designing interaction and content to achieve an effect that goes beyond the contribution of the single components

Digital Augmentation of Historical Objects Through Tangible Interaction

The technological advances brought about by the Internet of Things enable new opportunities for a more direct interaction between users, objects and places. This is an extremely valuable innovation for the Cultural Heritage sector, as it allows a more transparent use of technology in the digital augmentation of museums and cultural heritage sites. The possibility to augment physical objects with sensors detecting when they are moved and manipulated enables scenarios where descriptive information about objects is presented to users at the very exact time they are looking at them, stimulating engagement. This paper describes a collaborative research effort between cultural heritage professionals, human-computer interaction experts and developers which was aimed at investigating the goals and constraints curators consider for a physical encounter between visitors and historic relics. In a case study, we co-designed an interactive plinth centred on tangible interaction and evaluated the impact on the user experience of combining digital information with a hands-on experience of relics of World War I. Our findings show that visitors value this type of tangible interaction with collection objects positively, as it allows the discovery of details and the learning of aspects that normally go unnoticed. The synergy between physical and digital aspects stimulates empathy with the original users of the object and fosters social interaction