Bridging the gap between the digital and the physical
In this paper, the researchers utilized augmented reality to implement a museum guide. The main goal of this paper was to tackle the problem of using augmented reality to design a solution for navigating between the digital and physical space. Damala et al. created a AR mobile museum guide prototype that used museum objects as location markers. When users were near a painting, the system detected it and the user could view 5 things about the painting–description, technique, iconography, context, and artist. Information about the painting was communicated through mixed media, which included text and audio. The design was implemented on a hand-held device and users were recorded throughout their interaction in the museum. The researchers assessed the usability of their design through qualitative and quantitative measures. They assessed the ease of use and navigation, the effectiveness of the content communication e.g. audio recordings. Researchers found that overall, the use of augmented reality was promising in museums. Most users expressed a positive attitude toward the design and that users were able to learn how to use the system despite not having seen it before. Users also indicated that they wanted a more playful presentation of content. I think I believe most of the main points and perhaps it is even more believable now given that this paper is from 2008. There has been much improvement in augmented reality and I think more users are familiar with the idea of it so it’s easier for them to use. In addition, the researchers conducted surveys and focus groups to directly receive feedback about the system from the users.
This relates to our project between our design, at its core, deals with the same problem of navigating between the digital space and physical space. Something I hadn’t thought about in our design is the possibility that users may want to view past gallery that isn’t in the current gallery they are currently in, and so we could have incorporated a way to navigate to different spaces through our app. Also, it didn’t occur to me that we could have used a mixed media approach e.g. audio as a means of interacting with the gallery as my initial instinct was to just display text. We could have included some other methods to make the experience more interactive. In the future directions of this paper, the researchers mentioned that they hoped that users could use their own self-owned mobile, which is possible with our design as opposed to only having the option to use special devices like in that paper, so in that aspect, I think we improved upon the researcher’s design.
Source: Damala, A., Cubaud, P., Bationo, A., Houlier, P., & Marchal, I. (2008, September). Bridging the gap between the digital and the physical: design and evaluation of a mobile augmented reality guide for the museum visit. In Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts (pp. 120-127). ACM.