Augmenting Smart Objects for Cultural Heritage: A Usability Experiment

In recent years the explosive growth of smartphones and the evolution of mobile communication networks have certainly revolutionized the way how people communicate and access information. This growing adoption of technology creates also some challenges. It is struggling to teach people who has had an increased exposure to technology. Cultural heritage organizations deal with this issue endlessly and look to the new technologies as an opportunity to transform and enhance the exhibition experience for matching the interest of the newest visitors. In this paper we focus on the augmented reality (AR) technologies and the role that they play to connect visitors to the modern exhibitions. Moreover, we define for the first time the concept of Augmenting Smart Object (ASO) that arises from the study of the state of the art of the AR systems applied to the cultural context and from our direct experience in a participatory design aimed at developing and evaluating an AR system for a museum exhibition.