Abstract
Within the EU CEMEC project framework, a novel approach for using holographic showcases in museums has been conceived and experimented upon in different venues in the context of an itinerant exhibition dealing with Early Medieval European collections. The purpose of this holographic showcase, the so-called “box of stories”, is to improve the link and interaction between real and virtual contents in the museum’s context, making the exhibited object “alive” in the visitors’ perception. An Avar sword and a Byzantine treasure have been used as the main case studies, and they have been experienced in the museums of several European regions by audiences with different cultural backgrounds. This has been a great opportunity to carry out user experience (UX) evaluations in order to collect feedback (from about 600 museum visitors) regarding the attractiveness of such a mixed reality (MR) system, its usability, the comprehension of the contents, the efficacy of the logistics and environmental conditions, as well as the educational impact. The results of such inquiries helped the CNR ISPC team to identify the most meaningful User eXperience Analytics (UXA) able to support the work of UX evaluators and UX designers to assess the efficacy of digital cultural products. Indeed, this manuscript presents UXA and tries to draft a concrete and effective evaluation model for future digital projects for museum contexts.
Highlights
The research team of the Italian National Research Council’s (CNR) Institute for Heritage Science (ISPC) presents an innovative evaluation procedure applicable to different digital and virtual applications, tested for the occasion of the Connecting Early Medieval European Collections (CEMEC) European project. The latter saw the CNR ISPC team working on the design and development of a new digital output for museums and exhibitions: the holographic showcase, which is conceived to contextualize museum’s objects and tell their stories, making clear their functions to the public [1,2,3,4]
Five key communicative criteria address the efforts toward the definition of a reliable and effective solution for cultural fruition and understanding, and they are as follows: Use of mixed reality (MR) techniques: overlapping the virtual contents and the real objects is crucial to bring visitors’ attention to a museum’s collections, and MR brings the objects to life again (Section 2.1)
The selected techniques for the CEMEC project are in-depth questionnaires (QT), which allow users to express their thoughts and doubts or respond to a specific request or opinion in a voluntary and unconditional manner, and observations (OBS), which partially fall into this category as they collect objective–subjective data of the users who are observed, including their actions, gestures, and paths, which are recorded according to a pre-established form
Summary
Ispc.cnr.it, accessed on 5 November 2021) presents an innovative evaluation procedure applicable to different digital and virtual applications, tested for the occasion of the CEMEC European project (https://www.cemec-eu.net/, accessed on 5 November 2021). The latter saw the CNR ISPC team working on the design and development of a new digital output for museums and exhibitions: the holographic showcase, which is conceived to contextualize museum’s objects and tell their stories, making clear their functions to the public [1,2,3,4].
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