User Evaluation of a Multi-Platform Digital Storytelling Concept for Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Digital storytelling platforms have proven to be a great way of bringing cultural heritage closer to people. What lacks is a deeper understanding of the user experience of such systems, especially in multi-platform digital storytelling. For the last three years, we have been developing a project called Spotlight Heritage Timisoara, which is at its core a digital storytelling platform for the city of Timisoara (Romania), soon to be European Capital of Culture in 2023. The project consists of a website, mobile applications, and interactive museographic and street exhibitions. This paper presents a multi-platform usability evaluation study which employed semi-structured interviews, observations, think-aloud protocol, SUS questionnaire, Net Promoter Score and Product Reaction Cards to gather insights from 105 participants and reveal usability problems in the Spotlight Heritage context. We found out that the four platforms, i.e., interactive touchscreen table, desktop/laptop, mobile and Augmented Reality, have very good usability scores, are considered accessible and useful, work seamlessly together, and create user satisfaction and loyalty, across demographic groups, having the potential to bring people closer to cultural heritage.

Creating Location-Based Mobile Applications for Tourism: A Virtual AR Guide for Western Macedonia

“…Spotlight Heritage Timisoara is a digital cultural initiative of the Politehnica University of Timisoara that reveals, through digital storytelling, the city of Timisoara through stories of cultural and historical heritage, communities, and neighborhoods, interwoven with the personal stories of the inhabitants of yesterday and today [34]. The initiative employs an interactive touchscreen table, desktop/laptop, mobile, and AR platforms.…”

The Role of Audio in Immersive Storytelling: a Systematic Review in Cultural Heritage

“…Users were asked to navigate in an audio-virtual spatialised soundscape composed of several different virtual rooms while listening to a story by using a tangible controller with different degrees of control over movement, audio spatialisation, and audio playback. In the study, the Immersive Response Questionnaire (IMX 13 ) was used to evaluate immersion and the Discrete Emotion Questionnaire (DEQ, [198]) to measure emotional content, along with Heart Rate with a non-intrusive device (a wearable band) showing an increased immersion and emotional content in conditions with spatial audio and controlled playback.…”

“…Focusing on cultural heritage, disparate studies, and reviews are available on mixed reality storytelling [12,13], audio [6] and technology for audio AR [14]. However, very few comprehensive contributions that deal with these aspects altogether have been found.…”

Improving Visual Style Classification in Digital Games Using Intercoder Reliability Assessment

“…The respondents were urged to adopt the think-aloud protocol while assessing the digital game images to provide better insight into distinguishing visual image identification and its relationship with visual style classification (Vert et al, 2021). Previous studies have shown that the think-aloud method supported the improvement of visual style descriptions from a visual terminology perspective (Krupke et al, 2019).…”