Through the Loupe : Visitor engagement with a primarily text-based handheld AR application

The use of Augmented Reality (AR) in a museum or heritage setting holds great potential. However, until now, introducing AR into their buildings has been prohibitively expensive for most museums. On the one hand, programming the AR application could not be done in-house and would be rather costly. Secondly, the time-consuming production of high-quality digital visuals, often used in AR installations, needed to be outsourced. With the arrival of several AR engines, creating the actual experience has become easy, relatively fast and cheap, meaning the costs and skills associated with content creation might be the prime reason for particularly small and medium sized museums to not engage with the use of AR. This begs the question: Can other, simpler, types of content, such as texts, also be used to create a valued AR interpretation tool? This paper will discuss a study that has made a first attempt to answering this question. In addition, it explored the role AR can play in improving engagement between visitor, the object and its related information. The Loupe is a handheld AR application that was designed and tested as part of the meSch project. For this study, content, mainly consisting of text, was created for the Loupe at the Allard Pierson Museum. The tool was then tested with 22 participants who were asked to use the Loupe, either alone or together. Through questionnaires, observations and interviews, participants' engagement with and response to the Loupe were analyzed. This paper will discuss the findings of that study, focusing on the way the Loupe influenced the relationship between visitor and object, as well as the value of textual content as part of such an AR tool

The Loupe : tangible augmented reality for learning to look at Ancient Greek art

With the advent of digital museum interactives as a widely available learning offer in all types of museums, including history of art and archaeology museums, an ongoing debate has been established: Do these - usually screen-based - museum interactives assist visitors in focusing on museum objects and artefacts? Or do they distract and take away the attention from the real museum objects on display? We present the Loupe, a tangible Augmented Reality prototype in form of a magnifying lens, which allows museum visitors to get information in context about museum artefacts. We detail the design and content creation process that was employed in order to create a thematic tour for the the Greek Gallery of Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam. An evaluation study with 22 adult participants was carried out, using both qualitative and quantitative evaluation methodologies, so as to explore the utility and usability of the Loupe as well its learning and affective impact. Our findings suggest that the acceptance of the Loupe as a museum interactive and learning resource, was related both with its qualities as a tangible as well as with the structure of the content and the narratives revealed

Through the Loupe : visitor engagement with a primarily text-based handheld AR application

The use of Augmented Reality (AR) in a museum or heritage setting holds great potential. However, until now, introducing AR into their buildings has been prohibitively expensive for most museums. On the one hand, programming the AR application could not be done in-house and would be rather costly. Secondly, high-quality digital images, often used in AR installations, would be time consuming as well as being outsourced. With the arrival of several AR engines, creating the actual experience has become easy, relatively fast and cheap, meaning the costs and skills associated with content creation might be the prime reason for particularly small and medium sized museums to not engage with the use of AR. This begs the question: Can other, simpler, types of content, such as texts, also be used to create a valued AR interpretation tool? This paper will discuss a study that has made a first attempt to answering this question and also looked at the role AR can play in creating stronger engagement between visitor, object and information, as provided through the interpretation tool. The Loupe is a custom made handheld AR application that was designed and tested as part of the [anonymized] project. For this study, content, mainly consisting of text, was created for the Loupe at the [anonymized] museum. The tool was then tested with 22 participants who were asked to use the Loupe, either alone or together. Through questionnaires, observations and interviews, participants’ engagement with and response to the Loupe was analyzed. This paper will discuss the findings of that study, focusing on the way the Loupe influenced the relationship between visitor and object, as well as the role of textual content as part of such an AR tool

Oramics to electronica: investigating lay understandings of the history of technology through a participatory project

Oramics to Electronica was a 2011 Science Museum project designed to put the tools of museum participation in the service of research into public history, taking the history of electronic music as our example. The primary output was a temporary exhibition. Whereas the term ‘public history’ is often used to denote popularisation of academic history, in this inflection we are primarily concerned with how lay people like our visitors think about the past in general, and about the past of science and technology in particular. Taking the opportunities that arose, we worked with two ‘expert’ groups – of original 1960s participants in electronic music and of 12 recruited present-day music enthusiasts. We also enrolled a group of theatre students and another of writers to respond to the themes of the project and, in particular, to the ‘Oramics Machine’ a unique sound synthesizer created by Daphne Oram. In this essay, an account of our practice is bookended with consideration of related practice and reflections on the implications of the project. It is suggested that the project demonstrated the virtues of proceeding by way of engagement with micro-audiences to understand the ‘cognitive exclusion’ of potential visitors who do not see their interests represented in museum displays

Interactive spatial augmented reality in the Allard-Pierson museum: Exploration of cultural artifacts by simple finger pointing

International audienceThe visual and material properties of cultural heritage artifacts provide important information about their history. For example, traces of wear and tear inform us about an object's use. However, changes caused by manual handling or corrosion might also result in loss of either geometric properties, such as the deterioration of fine inscriptions, or appearance properties, such as fading color. Often, heritage institutions wish to inform visitors about these lost physical properties. Traditionally, this is done through the separate display of the physical artifact and additional textual or visual information. However, this approach requires considerable cognitive attention from the visitor, who is expected to successfully link the information provided by both resources, and thus hinders the process of understanding. This demonstration showcases an exhibit currently on display in the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) which contains a relief fragment from the wall of a mastaba 1 (a type of ancient Egyptian tomb).This fragment, which was originally colored, shows part of a scene of an ox being butchered, while an accompanying text urges the butcher to hurry up, as well asa flute player, accompanied by a descriptive text. This limestone relief is dated within the 4 th or 5 th dynasty (c. 2600-2350 BC). All the original pigmentation has been lost. We use spatial augmented reality to superimpose the original colors directly onto the artifact by means of a video projector. To encourage an interactive experience and prolonged attention, the color will only become visible where a visitor finger points at the relief. As a result, switching between the real artifact and the additional information is natural and visitors are encouraged to individually explore the various sections of the relief. The finger tracking is done by infrared sensing with the LeapMotion device, and for the color projection, a 3D acquisition of the original artifact was used. Our setup makes advanced 3D analysis accessible to the greater public with an everyday gesture, by naturally combining the inspection of the real object and the virtual object in a co-located interactionand visualization space. 1inv. Nr. APM 885

Interactive spatial augmented reality in the Allard-Pierson museum: Exploration of cultural artifacts by simple finger pointing

The visual and material properties of cultural heritage artifacts provide important information about their history. For example, traces of wear and tear inform us about an object's use. However, changes caused by manual handling or corrosion might also result in loss of either geometric properties, such as the deterioration of fine inscriptions, or appearance properties, such as fading color. Often, heritage institutions wish to inform visitors about these lost physical properties. Traditionally, this is done through the separate display of the physical artifact and additional textual or visual information. However, this approach requires considerable cognitive attention from the visitor, who is expected to successfully link the information provided by both resources, and thus hinders the process of understanding. This demonstration showcases an exhibit currently on display in the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) which contains a relief fragment from the wall of a mastaba 1 (a type of ancient Egyptian tomb).This fragment, which was originally colored, shows part of a scene of an ox being butchered, while an accompanying text urges the butcher to hurry up, as well asa flute player, accompanied by a descriptive text. This limestone relief is dated within the 4 th or 5 th dynasty (c. 2600-2350 BC). All the original pigmentation has been lost. We use spatial augmented reality to superimpose the original colors directly onto the artifact by means of a video projector. To encourage an interactive experience and prolonged attention, the color will only become visible where a visitor finger points at the relief. As a result, switching between the real artifact and the additional information is natural and visitors are encouraged to individually explore the various sections of the relief. The finger tracking is done by infrared sensing with the LeapMotion device, and for the color projection, a 3D acquisition of the original artifact was used. Our setup makes advanced 3D analysis accessible to the greater public with an everyday gesture, by naturally combining the inspection of the real object and the virtual object in a co-located interactionand visualization space. 1inv. Nr. APM 8850Virtual Museum Transnational Networ

Evaluating tangible and multisensory museum visiting experiences : lessons learned from the meSch project

This paper explores the potential of tangible and embodied interaction for encouraging a multisensory engagement with museum objects and artefacts on display, by means of focusing on the subtleties of devising and planning for evaluation and audience research. Measuring the impact of new technologies is one of the main challenges identified in the 2015 NMC Horizon report (Museum Edition). The challenge is even greater for emerging concepts, technologies, and approaches, such as the use of tangible and embodied interaction in museums and other Cultural Heritage settings. Taking as an example two case-studies from the EU meSch project, from Museon and Allard Pierson Museum in the Netherlands, we discuss our plan for devising and carrying out audience research so as to “document,” analyse, and interpret the impact of digitally enhanced, tangible, embodied, and multisensory museum visiting experiences. Our intention is to provide an honest account of the different strengths and weaknesses encountered for all evaluation methodologies that were used, namely observations, interviews, video data, questionnaires, meaning maps, and post-visit interviews. We also share and discuss lessons learned, insights and best practices that could be of benefit for museum and audience research professionals