Walking into the Past: Design mobile app for the geo-referred and the multimodal user experience in the context of cultural heritage

Abstract

Information technology and new mobile revolution could be a strategic resource in the field of humanities studies and a powerful tool to bring culture in the people's everyday life. The research explores the potentialities of the Web 3.0 applied to Cultural Heritage and tests three of its specificities: the semantic information architecture and the associative organization of contents, the geo-location of information in the physical environment and the social dynamics between people and places in geo-social networks. Starting from a theoretical analysis the work maps and classifies the existing best practices both for semantic knowledge-based platforms and mobile apps developed by the most important international museums, historical house-museums and private galleries. On the basis of these theoretical statements, of a literature analysis and a benchmark, the research explores and experiments - through a case study - the potentiality of a hybrid design process - both user-experience and technology driven - to revive a masterpiece of Italian literature - The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni - through a multi-layered historical storytelling approach to contents and a geo-referred experience of the places, monuments and routes described in the novel (XVII sec.), lived by the author (XIX sec.) and today thanks to a mobile app. Using the technical repertory of geo-referred data, AR, QR-Code and multimodal contents - videos/audio, interactive documents, shared dairies and UGC - the pilot of The Betrothed 3.0 allows the users to discover Milan. The user can navigate through the timeline and decide to visit the city experienced by the protagonists of the novel or by the author who lived and dwelt in the places described, but in another time period - his house-museum is one of the main touch point of the app - making comparisons with the contemporary reality. The project tries to set a design pattern for engaging in an effective way people facing the Humanities through technology. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.