Empowering Museum Experiences Applying Gamification Techniques Based on Linked Data and Smart Objects

Abstract

Museums play a crucial role in preserving cultural heritage. However, the forms in which they display cultural heritage might not be the most effective at piquing visitors’ interest. Therefore, museums tend to integrate different technologies that aim to create engaging and memorable experiences. In this context, the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technology results particularly promising due to the possibility of implementing smart objects in museums, granting exhibits advanced interaction capabilities. Gamification techniques are also a powerful technique to draw visitors’ attention. These often rely on interactive question-based games. A drawback of such games is that questions must be periodically regenerated, and this is a time-consuming task. To confront these challenges, this paper proposes a low-maintenance gamified smart object platform that automates the creation of questions by exploiting semantic web technologies. The platform has been implemented in a real-life scenario. The results obtained encourage the use of the platform in the museum considered. Therefore, it appears to be a promising work that could be extrapolated and adapted to other kinds of museums or cultural heritage institutions.

Smart and Inclusive Museums for Visitors with Autism: The App Case “A Dip in the Blue”

“…The design and development of the App were based on the didactic program and all the previous visit experiences following always a bottom-up approach, in fact, all the actors (researchers, museum staff, operators and parents of children/young teenagers with Autism) participated, through planned meetings (specific focus group) for discussing and defining contents and putting together different ideas strictly taking into account the concrete needs of the participants, responded to interviews and questionnaires, and compiled fact sheets for the visitors. According to previous studies on the topic [1,2,4,5,10,11,13,14,15] and past practical directed and undirected experiences already documented [10,11,12], the App is, therefore, the result of a deep analysis and further development of the original entire program (the visual agenda used during the visit, the steps of the museum visit path, and the instruments used for evaluating the overall initiative) using digital technologies.…”

Site Experience Enhancement and Perspective in Cultural Heritage Fruition—A Survey on New Technologies and Methodologies Based on a “Four-Pillars” Approach

“…Internet of Things (IoT) can enhance the fruition experience. Museum installations can be devised by using smart autonomous objects, that are objects augmented with sensing, processing, storing, and actuating capabilities and that can also exchange information with each other [49,50]. It is of interest to consider how AR can give an intuitive way to communicate with IoT objects.…”

“…Semantic Web and Internet of Things (IoT) are exploited in [50] to implement, in a real scenario, an engaging learning mechanism about a cultural heritage site. The approach relies on questions-answers games, where the multiple-choice questions are automatically created by extracting linked data from DBpedia and mining text descriptions about the exhibits.…”

An IoT-Enabled Information System for Smart Navigation in Museums

“…López-Martínez et al proposed a low-maintenance gamified smart object platform that uses semantic web technologies to automate the development of questions [ 30 ]. In this scheme, the idea of embedding smart objects in museums, providing exhibitions with advanced interactive capabilities, makes the upcoming Internet of Things (IoT) technology particularly appealing.…”