ArkaeVision VR Game: User Experience Research between Real and Virtual Paestum

Abstract

The design of a virtual reality (VR) cultural application is aimed at supporting the steps of the learning process-like concrete experimentation, reflection and abstraction—which are generally difficult to induce when looking at ruins and artifacts that bring back to the past. With the use of virtual technologies (e.g., holographic surfaces, head-mounted displays, motion—cation sensors) those steps are surely supported thanks to the immersiveness and natural interaction granted by such devices. VR can indeed help to symbolically recreate the context of life of cultural objects, presenting them in their original place of belonging, while they were used for example, increasing awareness and understanding of history. The ArkaeVision VR application takes advantages of storytelling and user experience design to tell the story of artifacts and sites of an important cultural heritage site of Italy, Paestum, creating a dramaturgy around them and relying upon historical and artistic content revised by experts. Visitors will virtually travel into the temple dedicated to Hera II of Paestum, in the first half of the fifth century BC, wearing an immersive viewer–HTC Vive; here, they will interact with the priestess Ariadne, a digital actor, who will guide them on a virtual tour presenting the beliefs, the values and habits of an ancient population of the Magna Graecia city. In the immersive VR application, the memory is indeed influenced by the visitors’ ability to proceed with the exploratory activity. Two evaluation sessions were planned and conducted to understand the effectiveness of the immersive experience, usability of the virtual device and the learnability of the digital storytelling. Results revealed that certainly the realism of the virtual reconstructions, the atmosphere and the “sense of the past” that pervades the whole VR cultural experience, characterize the positive feedback of visitors, their emotional engagement and their interest to proceed with the exploration.

Beyond virtual cultural tourism: history-living experiences with cinematic virtual reality

“…While previous studies explored the relationship between presence and narrative-related effects in immersive experiences (e.g., Diemer et al, 2015;Gorini et al, 2011;Shin, 2018), future research is needed to assess the higher emotional effect of narrative immersion in relation to other experiential elements and to storytellers' intentions. Further examination is also warranted to provide evidence supporting the relationship between emotional engagement and the memorability of the experience in line with Han et al (2020) and Pagano et al (2020).…”

“…Notwithstanding these limitations, the study offers several insights into the use of cVR for creating storytelling experiences in this context, included their potential to emotionally engage viewers. This is considered a key issue for the design of meaningful and memorable experiences based on VR in cultural heritage tourism (Han et al, 2020;Pagano et al, 2020;Roussou, 2008). As VR is increasingly adopted for cultural heritage storytelling and the cVR medium itself starts to find a place in this context, there is the opportunity to further explore its potential for the development of innovative cultural experiences beyond virtual tours.…”

“…In their project, the virtual scenarios and characters' features are designed to fuel users' immersion and emotional involvement, which in turn contributed to generate motivation and to activate the learning process more quickly. In relation to the same project, Pagano et al (2020) have showed how the integration of scenography, art and traditional filmic direction for representing the atmosphere of the past in the digital reproduction generated a strong emotional involvement that impacted users' attention and memorability of the experience.…”

New methods and technologies for enhancing usability and accessibility of educational data

“…User experience analysis in the educational realm is directly linked to the levels of user acceptance and satisfaction [ 120 ] of the new wave of educational technological ecosystems and the personalization of learning [ 121 ]. Barneche-Naya and Hernández-Ibañez describe the results of a case study intended to compare three different user movement paradigms (metaphoric, symbolic and natural) designed to control the visit to virtual environments for a NUI-based museum installation.…”

New methods and technologies for enhancing usability and accessibility of educational data

“…User experience analysis in the educational realm is directly linked to the levels of user acceptance and satisfaction [ 120 ] of the new wave of educational technological ecosystems and the personalization of learning [ 121 ]. Barneche-Naya and Hernández-Ibañez describe the results of a case study intended to compare three different user movement paradigms (metaphoric, symbolic and natural) designed to control the visit to virtual environments for a NUI-based museum installation.…”