MRsive: An Augmented Reality Tool for Enhancing Wayfinding and Engagement with Art in Museums

Abstract

Most museums use printed methods to support indoor navigation and visitor engagement strategies. However, modern museum visitors’ needs are not always met using static and conventional approaches, which are commonly employed in today’s museums. This paper investigates how indoor wayfinding and visitor engagement in the museum might be improved through interactive augmented reality. We designed “MRsive”, a handheld Augmented Reality (AR) tool using a user-centered design approach. The ultimate goal is twofold: the first is to simplify the required cognitive effort in navigating the museum space, and the second goal is to boost visitor engagement with museum artifacts through multisensory interaction. MRsive uses computer vision tools to read visual features in the space and achieve accurate indoor positioning of the directions and virtual cues anchored in the physical space. To evaluate our design, we followed a human-centered design approach. We conducted user testing at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) followed by semi-structured interviews. The observations and answers of participants showed a considerable improvement in the speed, accuracy and ease-of-use when completing a wayfinding or engagement task. We hope our findings and discussion will contribute to the future development of this system and other AR tools that may improve wayfinding in complex indoor spaces and engagement with points of interest in other indoor environments.