The Effectiveness of an Augmented Reality Guiding System in an Art Museum

Abstract

Throughout the past decades, art museums have employed a number of digital technology aids in order to enhance the visitor’s experience and memory retainment. Augmented reality has proven to be among the most successful applications in this regard as studies have shown it to be the most effective in eliciting the interest of the visitors and enhance their learning. Most of these augmented reality systems have been implemented on tablet computers or hand-held mobile devices. This chapter explores the effectiveness of such systems and presents an experiment conducted using an augmented reality system operating on a head mounted display. Gathered results and user evaluation indicated that the system offered an enhanced museum experience and improved the users’ concentration on exhibition, their art appreciation skills and more importantly elicited the visitor with a renewed interest in the artworks.