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.

This work addresses the lack of methodologies for the seamless integration of 360° videos, 3D digitized artifacts, and virtual human agents within a virtual reality environment. The proposed methodology is showcased in the context of a tour guide application and centers around the innovative use of a central hub, metaphorically linking users to various historical locations. Leveraging a treasure hunt metaphor and a storytelling approach, this combination of digital structures is capable of building an exploratory learning experience. Virtual human agents contribute to the scenario by offering personalized narratives and educational content, contributing to an enriched cultural heritage journey. Key contributions of this research include the exploration of the symbolic use of the central hub, the application of a gamified approach through the treasure hunt metaphor, and the seamless integration of various technologies to enhance user engagement. This work contributes to the understanding of context-specific cultural heritage applications and their potential impact on cultural tourism. The output of this research work is the reusable methodology and its demonstration in the implemented showcase application that was assessed by a heuristic evaluation.