This article attempts to understand how present Virtual Reality (VR) environments can contribute to enhancing the communication of cultural heritage by providing an experience of the past that is acceptable for the younger generation and how museums and cultural institutions should adopt and use such technologies. Aspects of acceptance, experience, and expectation of VR with the underlying values are not well understood but are important for the sustainability of the communication of cultural heritage as a bequest to future generations. We conducted a combined quantitative--qualitative study on the participants who have various prior experience with gaming and VR, and different levels of knowledge on the history presented within the virtual environment. This study investigates how participants accept and are stimulated in terms of personal experience and their expectations and ideas for the future of museums if VR is used for enhancing the learning of cultural heritage. Prior gaming and VR experience were investigated to see whether they do indeed influence the preference for using VR for learning cultural heritage. We demonstrated that particular age groups and background are especially agreeable to virtual reality as environments for learning and experiencing cultural heritage, regardless of their knowledge of the historical context of the virtually reconstructed site. Our findings also revealed important behaviours in our demographics group with regards to user preferred length of time and the believability of the virtual environment and how it influences aspects of their experience such as the exploration of the heritage site, familiarity, and meaning making. The study has implications for the use of VR for enhancing the experience of cultural heritage in museums and cultural institutions.

Museum artifacts are the main way for visitors to experience and learn about cultural heritage. Augmented reality (AR) allows for high interactivity and is increasingly applied in museums to improve tourists’ experience and learning. It also supports the extension of museum experience to outside of the physical museum space, contributing to the visiting trajectory and takeaway experience. In this paper, we present our design of two tangible AR interfaces for cultural artifacts: Postcard AR and CubeMuseum AR, followed by three user studies that evaluate and optimize the design. In Study 1, we conducted a within-subjects study (N = 24) that compares the two AR interfaces with a baseline condition (Leaflet). Our results demonstrate the positive effects of tangible AR interfaces on users’ motivation and engagement in learning cultural heritage. In Study 2, we further explored how to optimize CubeMuseum AR by adopting a user-centered design approach. Through the analysis of expert interviews (N = 7) and an online survey (N = 207), the results specify a series of requirements and design guidelines for tangible AR interfaces to be used as a learning tool and a hybrid gift. Based on the findings, the design of the CubeMuseum AR was optimized and evaluated in Study 3. A between-subjects user study was conducted (N = 32) to compare the optimized design with the initial design. The results verified the positive effects of gamified tangible AR interfaces on users’ motivation, engagement, and performance in learning cultural heritage. We present our design and evaluation results, and discuss the implications of designing tangible AR interfaces for cultural heritage learning and museum gifting.

Target selection is a fundamental task in interactive Augmented Reality (AR) systems. Predicting the intended target of selection in such systems can provide users with a smooth, low-friction interaction experience. Our work aims to predict gaze-based target selection in AR headsets with eye and head endpoint distributions, which describe the probability distribution of eye and head 3D orientation when a user triggers a selection input. We first conducted a user study to collect users’ eye and head behavior in a gaze-based pointing selection task with two confirmation mechanisms (air tap and blinking). Based on the study results, we then built two models: a unimodal model using only eye endpoints and a multimodal model using both eye and head endpoints. Results from a second user study showed that the pointing accuracy is improved by approximately 32% after integrating our models into gaze-based selection techniques.

Hybridity in immersive technologies has not been studied for factors that are likely to influence engagement. A noticeable factor is the spatial enclosure that defines where users meet. This involves a mutual object of interest, contents that the users may generate around the object, and the proximity between users. This study examines these factors, namely how object interactivity, user-generated contents (UGC) and avatar proximity influence engagement. We designed a Hybrid Virtual and Augmented Reality (HVAR) environment that supports paired users to experience cultural heritage in both Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) . A user study was conducted with 60 participants, providing assessments of engagement and presence via questionnaires, together with mobile electroencephalogram (mEEG) and user activity data that measures VR user engagement in real-time. Our findings provide insights into how engagement between users can occur in HVAR environments for the future hybrid reality with multi-device connectivity.