Usability evaluation of a virtual museum interface

The Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects (ARCO) system provides software and interface tools to museum curators to develop virtual museum exhibitions, as well as a virtual environment for museum visitors over the World Wide Web or in informative kiosks. The main purpose of the system is to offer an enhanced educative and entertaining experience to virtual museum visitors. In order to assess the usability of the system, two approaches have been employed: a questionnaire based survey and a Cognitive Walkthrough session. Both approaches employed expert evaluators, such as domain experts and usability experts. The result of this study shows a fair performance of the followed approach, as regards the consumed time, financial and other resources, as a great deal of usability problems has been uncovered and many aspects of the system have been investigated. The knowledge gathered aims at creating a conceptual framework for diagnose usability problems in systems in the area of Virtual Cultural Heritage

Virtual Museum Interface Evaluation: the ARCO case

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Inversion of hydraulic conductivity from Induced Polarisation, Part B: field examples from five countries

The knowledge about the hydraulic conductivity of the subsurface is crucial to know as it is a main parameter for groundwater flow characterization within an aquifer. The geophysical method time-domain Induced Polarisation has been shown to be useful for estimating the hydraulic conductivity. By using a new inversion approach, where we directly invert for hydraulic properties as inversion parameters, the estimation of the hydraulic conductivity can be improved. We have measured at several test sites across five European countries, all characterized by unconsolidated sediments, but with differences in terms of the water electrical conductivity. In particular, at the Zeeland site in the Netherlands, a strong gradient in the water electrical conductivity is present since a freshwater lens is overlaying the sea water. A very good agreement between the hydraulic conductivity values from the inversion with the present hydraulic model can be observed, despite of the high water electrical conductivity, which makes it challenging to identify the clay layers at the site. Similar results were achieved for the other tests sites. Therewith, this new methodology might open the way for reliable, cost-effective geophysical estimation of hydraulic conductivity in the field

The evaluation of ARCO: A lesson in curatorial competence and intuition with new technology

This article presents the results of the evaluation study of the Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects (ARCO) system which provides software and interface tools to museum curators for the development of virtual museum exhibitions for the World Wide Web or for information kiosks. The aim of the current research is to investigate how a virtual museum system is coping with the demands of museum curators, to examine the needs of virtual museum visitors, and to provide a set of criteria and guidelines for defining effective evaluation of such systems. Evaluation methods such as heuristic evaluation and walkthroughs were employed in the study in order to assess various components and interfaces of the system

VLEs, social stories and children with autism: A prototype implementation and evaluation

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) have been successfully used in educational interventions for children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) for overcoming their persistent differences related to social communication and imagination. This paper investigates the potential of VLEs presenting Social Stories, as an advantageous pathway for the development of social problem skills in children with ASC. To this end, it presents the design and development of VLSS (Virtual Learning Environment with Social Stories), a prototype three-dimensional VLE for children with ASC. Overall, the evaluation of VLSS by 40 experts (special education teachers) was very positive, indicating that VLSS has the potential to be a beneficial and easy-to-use educational tool for enhancing social problem solving in children with ASC. © 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New Yor