Enhancing the museum experience with a sustainable solution based on contextual information obtained from an on-line analysis of users’ behaviour

Human computer interaction has evolved in the last years in order to enhance users’ experiences and provide more intuitive and usable systems. A major leap through in this scenario is obtained by embedding, in the physical environment, sensors capable of detecting and processing users’ context (position, pose, gaze, ...). Feeded by the so collected information flows, user interface paradigms may shift from stereotyped gestures on physical devices, to more direct and intuitive ones that reduce the semantic gap between the action and the corresponding system reaction or even anticipate the user’s needs, thus limiting the overall learning effort and increasing user satisfaction. In order to make this process effective, the context of the user (i.e. where s/he is, what is s/he doing, who s/he is, what are her/his preferences and also actual perception and needs) must be properly understood. While collecting data on some aspects can be easy, interpreting them all in a meaningful way in order to improve the overall user experience is much harder. This is more evident when we consider informal learning environments like museums, i.e. places that are designed to elicit visitor response towards the artifacts on display and the cultural themes proposed. In such a situation, in fact, the system should adapt to the attention paid by the user choosing the appropriate content for the user’s purposes, presenting an intuitive interface to navigate it. My research goal is focused on collecting, in a simple,unobtrusive, and sustainable way, contextual information about the visitors with the purpose of creating more engaging and personalized experiences

User-Customizable Web Components for Building One-Page Sites

Most of online website builders work by combining and customizing reusable HTML modules. This approach could rise the risk of conflicts among modules. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is writing the specification of Web Components. This standard provides a browser-native solution in order to realize encapsulated Document Object Model (DOM) elements, in which the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript scope is locally bound and the interaction with the document is strictly designed by the component author. Upon this standard, libraries have been built, Google’s Polymer being an example, which provide a declarative and easy way to realize Components. In this paper, we provide a solution to the module approach limit in website builders by using Web Components as modules that are customizable by the end user. Our approach uses standard web technologies that modern browsers are natively supporting. We describe how a customizable Web Component is designed and how to bind their options with the generator UI. Furthermore, we will show an application of this approach in a Landing Page generator. We demonstrate that the generator could import again the generated HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and edit it, without any intermediary data structure (i.e., eXtensible Markup Language, XML or JavaScript Object Notation, Json). Finally, we outline further future development of this approach

MusA: Using Indoor Positioning and Navigation to Enhance Cultural Experiences in a museum

In recent years there has been a growing interest into the use of multimedia mobile guides in museum environments. Mobile devices have the capabilities to detect the user context and to provide pieces of information suitable to help visitors discovering and following the logical and emotional connections that develop during the visit. In this scenario, location based services (LBS) currently represent an asset, and the choice of the technology to determine users' position, combined with the definition of methods that can effectively convey information, become key issues in the design process. In this work, we present MusA (Museum Assistant), a general framework for the development of multimedia interactive guides for mobile devices. Its main feature is a vision-based indoor positioning system that allows the provision of several LBS, from way-finding to the contextualized communication of cultural contents, aimed at providing a meaningful exploration of exhibits according to visitors' personal interest and curiosity. Starting from the thorough description of the system architecture, the article presents the implementation of two mobile guides, developed to respectively address adults and children, and discusses the evaluation of the user experience and the visitors' appreciation of these application

Teenage Visitor Experience: Classification of Behavioral Dynamics in Museums

Teenagers' engagement in museums is much talked about but little research has been done to understand their behavior and inform design. Findings from co-design sessions with teenagers suggested they value games and stories when thinking about enjoyable museum tours. Informed by these findings and working with a natural history museum, we designed: a story-based tour (Turning Point) and a game-based tour (Haunted Encounters), informed by similar content. The two strategies were evaluated with 78 teenagers (15-19 years old) visiting the museum as part of an educational school trip. We assessed teenagers' personality in class; qualitative and quantitative data on their engagement, experience, and usability of the apps were collected at the museum. The triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data show personality traits mapping into different behaviors. We offer implications for the design of museum apps targeted to teenagers, a group known as difficult to reach

Integrating a Location-Based Mobile Game in the Museum Visit: Evaluating Visitors’ Behaviour and Learning

Location-based systems currently represent a suitable solution to enhance cultural experiences inside museums, as they can satisfy visitors’ needs through the provision of contextualized contents and services. In this framework, a promising approach to captivate the attention of teenagers—a hard to please target audience—is represented by mobile serious games, such as playful activities aiming to primarily fulfil educational purposes. The use of a mobile digital tool during the visit definitely discloses new opportunities for contextual learning scenarios; however, so far, only a few studies have analysed the impact of different communication approaches on visitors’ degree of exploration and acquisition of knowledge. This work aims to enrich this field of research, presenting the conceptual framework; the design principles; and the evaluation results of “Gossip at palace,” a location-based mobile game integrating a storytelling approach. The game was developed for an Italian historical residence to communicate its 18th-century history to teenagers, capitalizing on narrative and game mechanics to foster young visitors’ motivations to explore the museum and facilitate their meaning-making process. Following a mixed-methods perspective, the article firstly describes to what extent the components of the application were appreciated by teenagers as well as by other visitor segments. Secondly, it provides an insight on the effectiveness of the game in facilitating the acquisition of historical knowledge by participants, enriched by considerations on the methods to be adopted when evaluating mobile learning in informal educational settings. Thirdly, players’ degree of use of the digital game throughout the visit is compared to analogous patterns registered for people using a multimedia mobile guide in the same venue. On the one hand, the study pointed out that the game facilitated a wider exploration of the museum; on the other, it highlighted that players mainly gained a superficial knowledge of the proposed content

Intrigue at the Museum: Facilitating Engagement and Learning through a Location-based Mobile Game

The use of portable devices to explore informal learning environments has recently exposed museums to a mobile learning (m-learning) scenario. In particular, location-based mobile applications that take into account not only a specific physical venue, but also the personal and social context can be valuable resources to enhance the visitor experience. Game-based applications that leverage on fun and social interaction to facilitate the meaning-making process represent a promising approach, since they favor both learning and entertainment activities. This paper presents the design and evaluation of “Intrigue at the museum”, a location-based game addressed to children visiting Palazzo Madama-Museo Civico d’Arte Antica (Turin, Italy). This piece of work offers a methodological insight into the evaluation of engagement as a precursor of learning and provides evidence that a resource of this kind can contribute to a meaningful and enjoyable exploration of the museum by children

Enhancing a Museum Mobile Application through User Experience Design: A Comparative Analysis

Museum mobile applications usually aim at enhancing the visitors’ experience, but a poor application design may dissuade people to extensively use the digital tools throughout the visit. In order to make multimedia guides appealing and easy to use, the interaction model, the information architecture and the graphic interfaces need thus to be carefully crafted. This paper presents a comparative analysis of a museum mobile application developed for the exploration of Palazzo Madama-Museo Civico d’Arte Antica (Torino, Italy). The results of an experimental evaluation on the ground from nearly 200 users led to a better understanding of museum visitors’ needs and supported a thorough comparison between two different releases of the mobile application, highlighting limits, enhancement of the visitors’ experience and improvements in their exploration behaviors. Finally, future research directions are proposed by building on the reported real-world experimental evaluatio