With the ever-advancing availability of digitized museum artifacts, the question of how to make the vast collection of exhibits accessible and explorable beyond what museums traditionally offer via their websites and exposed databases has recently gained increased attention. This research work introduces the Invisible Museum: a user-centric platform that allows users to create interactive and immersive virtual 3D/VR exhibitions using a unified collaborative authoring environment. The platform itself was designed following a Human-Centered Design approach, with the active participation of museum curators and end-users. Content representation adheres to domain standards such as International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums (CIDOC-CRM) and the Europeana Data Model and exploits state-of-the-art deep learning technologies to assist the curators by generating ontology bindings for textual data. The platform enables the formulation and semantic representation of narratives that guide storytelling experiences and bind the presented artifacts with their socio-historic context. Main contributions are pertinent to the fields of (a) user-designed dynamic virtual exhibitions, (b) personalized suggestions and exhibition tours, (c) visualization in web-based 3D/VR technologies, and (d) immersive navigation and interaction. The Invisible Museum has been evaluated using a combination of different methodologies, ensuring the delivery of a high-quality user experience, leading to valuable lessons learned, which are discussed in the article.

Improving the well-being and quality of life of the elderly population is closely related to assisting them to effectively manage age-related conditions such as chronic illnesses and anxiety, and to maintain their independence and self-sufficiency as much as possible. This paper presents the design, architecture and implementation structure of an adaptive system for monitoring the health and well-being of the elderly. The system was designed following best practices of the Human-Centred Design approach involving representative end-users from the early stages.

In this paper, a representation based on digital assets and semantic annotations is established for Traditional Craft instances, in a way that captures their socio-historic context and preserves both their tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage dimensions. These meaningful and documented experiential presentations are delivered to the target audience through narratives that address a range of uses, including personalized storytelling, interactive Augmented Reality (AR), augmented physical artifacts, Mixed Reality (MR) exhibitions, and the Web. The provided engaging cultural experiences have the potential to have an impact on interest growth and tourism, which can support Traditional Craft communities and institutions. A secondary impact is the attraction of new apprentices through training and demonstrations that guarantee long-term preservation. The proposed approach is demonstrated in the context of textile manufacturing as practiced by the community of the Haus der Seidenkultur, a former silk factory that was turned into a museum where the traditional craft of Jacquard weaving is still practiced.

This work regards the representation of handicrafts for craft training and demonstration in the environment of an ethnographic heritage museum. The craft of mastic cultivation is chosen as a use case. This paper presents the process of representation and presentation of this craft, following an articulated pipeline approach for data collection, annotation, and semantic representation. The outcomes were used to implement an exhibition that targets the presentation of craft context and craft training, through interactive experiences, mobile applications, and a hands-on training where users reenact the gestures of a mastic cultivator. Preliminary evaluation results show high acceptance for the installation and increased user interest.

The accessibility of Cultural Heritage content for the diverse user population visiting Cultural Heritage Institutions and accessing content online has not been thoroughly discussed. Considering the penetration of new digital media in such physical and virtual spaces, lack of accessibility may result in the exclusion of a large user population. To overcome such emerging barriers, this paper proposes a cost-effective methodology for the implementation of Virtual Humans, which are capable of narrating content in a universally accessible form and acting as virtual storytellers in the context of online and on-site CH experiences. The methodology is rooted in advances in motion capture technologies and Virtual Human implementation, animation, and multi-device rendering. This methodology is employed in the context of a museum installation at the Chios Mastic Museum where VHs are presenting the industrial process of mastic processing for chewing gum production.

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and services and their integration in intelligent environments creates the need for a simple yet effective way of controlling and communicating with them. Towards such a direction, this work presents ParlAmI, a conversational framework featuring a multimodal chatbot that permits users to create simple “if-then” rules to define the behavior of an intelligent environment. ParlAmI delivers a disembodied conversational agent in the form of a messaging application named MAI, and an embodied conversational agent named nAoMI employing the programmable humanoid robot NAO. This paper describes the requirements and architecture of ParlAmI, the infrastructure of the “Intelligent Home” in which ParlAmI is deployed, the characteristics and functionality of both MAI and nAoMI, and finally presents the findings of a user experience evaluation that was conducted with the participation of sixteen users.