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

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

THE VOLUNTEERED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION IN ARCHAEOLOGY

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), which is still at a very early stage, to identify its use worldwide including characteristic examples and research its potential applications in Cultural Heritage and Archaeology as a new field for study. In the first part of the paper a brief review of the field is given, the international terminology and its components are analysed. The basic framework of VGI and the international research trends are presented as well. The second part deals with the applications of VGI in Cultural Heritage and Archaeology. Finally, some thoughts, conclusions and recommendations for action and institutionalization of use are offered underlining that VGI cannot be applied to Archaeology without professional attendance and supervision so as unwanted results can be prevented

Virtual Museum Interface Evaluation: the ARCO case

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Preliminary evaluation of the Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects system

We present a preliminary human-centred evaluation of the ARCO (Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects) system that provides museums with software and interface tools that allow them to build integrated Web3D, Virtual and Augmented Reality based virtual museums. Heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthroughs have been employed, focusing on expert evaluation (curators of museums) and novices (visitors of museums), to evaluate various components and interfaces of the system

Virtual museums: first results of a survey on methods and tools

Museums are interested in digitizing their collections in order not only to preserve the cultural information, but also to make it available to the wide public in an attractive manner. Emerging technologies, such as VR, AR and Web3D are widely used for creating virtual museum exhibitions in a museum environment through informative kiosks and on the World Wide Web. This paper makes a survey in the field and explores the various kinds of virtual museums, their advantages and limitations by presenting old and new methods and tools used for their creation