Digital Heritage Systems (original) (raw)
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Digital Heritage Systems: the ARCO Evaluation
2013
This chapter describes the evaluation methods conducted for a digital heritage system, called ARCO (Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects), which examines the tools and methods used for its evaluation. The case study describes the knowledge acquired from several user requirement assessments, and further describes how to use this specific knowledge to provide a general framework for a holistic virtual museum evaluation. This approach will facilitate designers to determine the flaws of virtual museum environments, fill the gap between the technologies they use and those the users prefer and improve them in order to provide interactive and engaging virtual museums. The proposed model used not only quantitative, but also qualitative evaluation methods, and it is based on the extensive evaluations of the ARCO system by simple end-users, usability experts and domain experts. The main evaluation criteria were usability, presence, and learning.
Informatica, 2006
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.
Usability Evaluation of a Virtual Museum Interface
Informatica, 2006
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.
Virtual Museum Interface Evaluation: the ARCO case
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 ...
November 2011 saw the opening of the exhibition “Archeovirtual” organized by CNR ITABC -Virtual Heritage Lab - and V-MusT Network of Excellence, in Paestum, Italy. The event, that was part of a wider European project focus on virtual museums, turned to be a great opportunity to show many different projects, applications and installations about Virtual Reality and Cultural Heritage. The four-days exhibition was an occasion to get in touch with the newest experiences with virtual reconstructions, 3D models, interactive environments, augmented realities and mobile solutions for cultural contents; at the same time, it was an opportunity for organizers to directly face the audience’s impact towards projects, because of the necessity to investigate more on social and behavioral aspects in order to positively affect the learning benefits of public. So doing, we could build in the future applications much more tailored on the final costumers, closer to their abilities and necessities. During the show four types of investigative tools was implied to evaluate the general visitor’s behavior and the effectiveness of interfaces, understand their expectations and experiences, and obtain a reference grid of values to evaluate if users' experience fit with organizers' ones. The first outcomes said that audience’s impact toward interactive applications seems depending on the capability of technology to be “invisible”; otherwise technology has to assure a wide range of possibilities in content accesses. In definitive, virtual museums need to have an always more integrated approach between cultural contents, interfaces and social and behavioral studies.
Virtual museum system evaluation through user studies
Journal of Cultural Heritage, 2017
Virtual museum (VM) systems are a very effective solution for the communication of cultural contents, thanks to their playful and educational approach. In fact, these appealing technological systems have demonstrated their usefulness and value in science centres and traditional museums all over the world, thanks to the fact that visitors can view digitized artworks and explore reconstructed historical places by means of VM-hosted installations. This paper presents a methodology, based on user studies, for the comparative evaluation of different design alternatives related to the user interaction with VM systems. The methodology has been validated by means of a testbed related to a VM system hosted at the "Museum of the Bruttians and the Sea" of Cetraro (Italy). The results of the user study demonstrate that this methodology can be effectively adopted in the development process of VM systems to optimize its outcomes in terms of usability and potential for entertainment and education.
Archeovirtual 2011: An Evaluation Approach to Virtual Museums
November 2011 saw the opening of the exhibition “Archeovirtual” organized by CNR ITABC -Virtual Heritage Lab - and V-MusT Network of Excellence, in Paestum, Italy, under the general direction of BMTA1. The event, that was part of a wider European project focus on virtual museums, turned to be a great opportunity to show many different projects, applications and installations about Virtual Reality and Cultural Heritage. The four-days exhibition was an occasion to get in touch with the newest experiences with virtual reconstructions, 3D models, interactive environments, augmented reality and mobile solutions for cultural contents; at the same time, it was an opportunity for organizers to directly face the audience’s impact towards projects. That because of the necessity to investigate more on social and behavioral aspects in order to positively affect the learning benefits of public. So doing, we could build in the future applications much more tailored on the final costumers, closer to their abilities and necessities. During the show four types of investigative tools were employed to evaluate the general visitor’s behavior and the effectiveness of interfaces, to understand their expectations and experiences, and to obtain a reference grid of values to test if users’ experience fit with organizers’ ones. The first outcomes revealed that audience’s impact toward interactive applications seems depending on the capability of technology to be “invisible”; otherwise technology has to assure a wide range of possibilities in content accesses. In definitive, virtual museums need to have an always more integrated approach between cultural contents, interfaces and social and behavioral studies.
AN INTEGRATED METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO EVALUATE VIRTUAL MUSEUMS IN REAL MUSEUM CONTEXTS
User evaluations on virtual museums (VMs) projects are planned because of the necessity to conduct test-beds and user experience surveys to have feedbacks and improve criticisms in the interactive software applications. From a methodological point of view, no specific direction has been taken both in humanities or computer sciences fields, but several and different strategies are employed whenever we deal with VMs, given the diversity and complexity of each of them, the target, the context of use and so on. CNR ITABC has progressively developed a methodological approach for the user experience evaluation, focusing its attention on the pedagogical aspects and cognitive affordances. In the latest CNR evaluations, especially in the case of the " Virtual Museum of the Tiber Valley " and " Livia's Villa Reloaded " , we come up with solid considerations: what is relevant here is the centrality of the end-user who need to be the main protagonist of any cultural public transmission and thus of any investigation programme.
Usability Evaluation of Virtual Museums’ Interfaces Visualization Technologies
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014
This paper reports on a user-centered formative usability evaluation of diverse visualization technologies used in Virtual Museums. It initially presents the selection criteria and the five museum websites involved in the analysis. Then, it describes the evaluation process, in which a group of subjects explored the museums' on-line resources and answered in two usability questions concerning overall reaction to the website and the subjective satisfaction of the users. After user testing, quantitative and qualitative data have been collected and statistically analysed. However, much research remains to be done on future research in terms of larger sample, different methodologies and varied contexts.
Combinatory Usability Evaluation of an Educational Virtual Museum Interface
Sixth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'06)
This paper presents the usability evaluation study that has been undertaken for the Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects (ARCO) system. The main purpose of this system is to integrate an enhanced educative and entertaining experience to virtual museum visitors. The aim of the current research is the evaluation of the interface of the system. Users as well as domain experts were recruited to investigate the most effective combination of user-based and expert-based evaluation, in order to elicit the most valuable results. Quantitative as well as qualitative approaches have also been employed, thus providing a framework for a holistic evaluation of the usability of an interface of such kind.