THE ROLE OF TANGIBLE INTERACTION FOR COMMUNICATING QUALITATIVE INFORMATION OF BUILT HERITAGE

[EN] Each built heritage artifact possesses multiple types of information, varying from simple, factual aspects to more complex qualitative and tacit qualities and values like the architectural symbolism of a monument. This paper investigates how tangible interaction can enable the communication of qualitative information of built heritage to lay visitors. Through a comparative, field study in a real-world museum context, we examined how the tangible characteristics of an interactive prototype museum installation influence how visitors perceive a particular story. The communicated story relates a historical journey in ancient Egypt to the physical and architectural characteristics of the entrance colonnade at the Djoser Complex in Saqqara. The first preliminary findings indicate how tangible interaction is able to engage museum visitors more to accomplish additional efforts, facilitating a vivid understanding of cultural values and architectural qualities of built heritage.Nofal, E.; Boschloos, V.; Hameeuw, H.; Vande Moere, A. (2016). THE ROLE OF TANGIBLE INTERACTION FOR COMMUNICATING QUALITATIVE INFORMATION OF BUILT HERITAGE. En 8th International congress on archaeology, computer graphics, cultural heritage and innovation. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 441-444. https://doi.org/10.4995/arqueologica8.2016.4153OCS44144

The role of tangible interaction to communicate tacit knowledge of built heritage

Meanings and values of built heritage vary from factual and explicit meanings which are relatively easy to present, to more tacit knowledge, which is typically more challenging to communicate due to its implicit and often abstract character. In this paper, we investigate how tangible interaction influences the communication of this tacit knowledge of built heritage, and howit affects the experience of visitors. Through a between-group comparative study in a real-world museum context, we examined howthe tangible characteristics of an interactive prototypemuseuminstallation influence how visitors perceive a particular story containing tacit heritage knowledge. The communicated story relates a historical journey in ancient Egypt to the physical and architectural characteristics of the entrance colonnade at the Djoser Complex in Saqqara. Our experimental conditions consisted of an interactive navigation (input) and a passive representation (output) components, ranging from traditional digital displays to fully tangible means of interaction. We report on our findings, which showed various differences and commonalities between our three experimental conditions. We conclude with a number of discussion points and design recommendations: (a) to strive for balance between navigation and representation modalities in terms of affordance and the required cognitive effort; (b) to take advantage of physical representation and grasping, such as conveying particular physical details and characteristics; and (c) to consider design aspects of embodiment, physical abstraction and materiality for future research or potential further development of communicating the meanings and values of heritage

3D Digital Heritage and Historical Storytelling: Outcomes from the Interreg EMR Terra Mosana Project

peer reviewedThis paper will explain how the activities undertaken in the Terra Mosana project have combined the writing of new heritage narratives with the creation of digital 3D virtual experiences. The main objective of the project was to strengthen the sense of belonging to the same community for the citizens of the Euregio Meuse-Rhine by recreating their common history and heritage in 3D. This was achieved through virtual and augmented reality experiences based on cross-border and renewed historical storylines.Terra Mosana INterreg EM

Co-gnito: a Participatory Physicalization Game for Urban Mental Mapping

This study introduces Co-gnito, a participatory physicalization game that supports collaborative urban mental mapping through storytelling. Through Co-gnito we investigate gaming as a means to elicit subjective spatial experiences and to steer the synchronous construction of a physicalization that aligns and represents them. Co-gnito was evaluated during seven deployments by analyzing how 28 players mapped their spatial experiences of two university campuses. Our results indicate that storytelling as a gaming mechanic, guided and motivated the gradual addition of personal contributions towards a collective outcome, but its reward system did not nudge the mapping direction as expected. We also demonstrate how the shared construction process of a physicalization is influenced by how the data encoding scheme was negotiated, by the token physical affordances and by the game mechanics. We therefore believe that our core contributions, comprising of: 1) a working research prototype; 2) an augmentation of the physicalization pipeline towards collaborative settings; and 3) a set of reflective considerations, provide actionable knowledge on how to design participatory physicalizations in the future

Architectural contextualization of heritage museum artifacts using augmented reality

Context is crucial for understanding meanings and values of heritage. Several heritage artifacts from recently destroyed monuments are exhibited in different museums around the world. As such contextualizing those isolated heritage artifacts enables museums to communicate architectural and spatial qualities of the original context to their visitors. With the rapid evolution of digital technologies, museums started to incorporate Augmented Reality (AR) to present and interpret their collections in more appealing and exciting ways. AR allows both an enrichment of heritage communication, and also encouragement of interactivity in museums. Through a field study in a real-world museum environment, we investigated how AR enhances the communication of the original context of an isolated artifact from the Nimrud palace in Iraq. We deployed a mixed-method evaluation methodology that led to an effective and engaging communication of the architectural context of that artifact, particularly perceiving and recalling architectural features and spatial dimensions. We conclude the paper with a set of discussion points about how AR positively affects visitors’ memorability of architectural qualities, and how it provokes their curiosity to explore more information. We highlight some considerations about AR visualization, such as how levels of embellishment direct user’s focus of attention, and which aspects should be considered when using AR abstract visualization to communicate heritage. We outline several design recommendations to overcome current AR usability issues in museums about intuition, freedom of movement, and age-related differences

Participatory Design Workshops: Interdisciplinary Encounters within a Collaborative Digital Heritage Project

This article aims to investigate how participatory design influences interdisciplinary relationships in digital heritage projects. In particular, the article reflects on opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary encounters in participatory design, with the cross-border project “Terra Mosana” as a case study, which aims to investigate, digitalize, and communicate the shared heritage of the Meuse–Rhine Euregion (EMR). Terra Mosana is a collaboration between multiple partners from municipalities, museums, cultural heritage sites, and universities in different EMR cities. Partners of the project have different backgrounds that vary from archaeologists, historians, and heritage professionals to computer scientists, developers, and communication specialists. My role in this project focused on designing and organizing several participatory design workshops with citizens of the EMR, aiming to empower and enable them to share their views about their shared history, and what they want from museums and other cultural institutions. Those workshops play a crucial role in the project by creating meaningful connections across the different disciplines involved in the project. In this article, I focus on the negotiation processes between the partners involved: What challenges were they confronted with? How did they arrive at creative solutions, and which issues remained unresolved? My analysis does not draw only on my participatory observation of workshops, but also on a focus group discussion that invited the partners to reflect on and assess the collaborative process

Utilization of Social Media for Raising Required Awareness of Human Factors Affecting Traffic Safety

It is believed that social media applications have already being accepted by young generations as a platform to socialize, collaborate and learn in an informal and flexible manner. Social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook have become extremely popular recently. The number of Facebook users in the Saudi Arabia has approximately quadrupled in the last three years (early 2010 – early 2013), increasing from 1.39 million users to 5.85 million users. Youth (between the ages of 15 and 29) continue to make up around 60% of Facebook users in the kingdom. They prefer SNSs to access information as it reduces physical strain, speak freely and improve self-confidence and character-building. Road traffic accidents (RTAs) in Saudi Arabia are becoming a serious public health problem, especially among teenagers and youth. Human factors are responsible for about 85 percent of all car accidents in the kingdom. Education and awareness are playing a promising role in traffic safety. Types of awareness concerning traffic safety varied widely. That is why the study aims to introduce the potential contribution of SNSs to raise the awareness of traffic safety among the Saudi youth, and to reduce the ratio of RTAs in the kingdom. The paper emphasizes the effective role of social media; communication using social media is viewed to be personalized depending on the method of interaction with digital content (such as images, video, audio, and the written word). The paper introduced a potential utilization of SNSs as a one step forward towards achieving traffic awareness among Saudi youth to protect them from the potential damage caused by traffic accidents resulting of human factors.No ISBN/ISSNstatus: publishe

Impact Plan:Societal impact of Terra Mosana Research

Slide deck prepared while working on the Societal Impact Workshop organized by Springer Nature, VSNU, and Maastricht University. Sessions led by Stefan de Jong and Carien Hilvering