A few days ago I have presented a co-authored paper in 9th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (VAST), in Braga, Portugal. Museums and other cultural institutions try to communicate the theme of their exhibitions and attract the visitors’ attention by presenting audio-visual information in a number of different ways. Traditional museum exhibitions have evolved from passive presentations of artefacts to interactive displays, such as pre-recorded audio guides and static information kiosks. However even if some technological advances have been adopted by current museum and mobile exhibitions, they provide very simplistic presentations compared to the potential of the current Information Technologies. It is therefore essential to provide a unifying framework that can be highly customisable, user-friendly and intuitive to use in order to engage a broad spectrum of users and take into account the diverse needs of museum visitors.
This paper presents solutions for both museum exhibitions and mobile guides moving towards a unifying framework based on open standards. This can offer more customisable experiences attracting and engaging a broader spectrum of users. Our solution takes into account the diverse needs of visitors to heritage and mobile guide exhibitions allowing for multimedia representations of the same content but using diverse interfaces including a web, a map, a virtual reality and an augmented reality domain. Different case studies illustrate the majority of the capabilities of the multimodal interfaces used and also how personalisation and customisation can be performed in both kiosk and mobile guide exhibitions to meet user needs.
A draft version of the paper can be downloaded from here.
A draft version of the paper can be downloaded from here.