Augmenting the Experience of a Museum Visit with a Geo-Located AR App for an Associated Archaeological Site

Abstract

The experience and learning effect of visiting a museum associated with an archaeological site located nearby can be augmented by a location-based app designed to explore the site. In this chapter, we describe the design of such an app for a relatively small archaeological site called Thetford Priory in England. The design and development of the app was a multidisciplinary and inter-sectoral effort. A survey was conducted with 164 children aged 10–11 years old from five different schools to evaluate the usability and user experience of the app and the learning effect of deploying it. Results of the survey indicated that the enjoyability, ease-of-use, and understandability of the app were generally high, and that the users tended to download the app and recommend it to others. Overall, the main implication we can infer from the research study is that new mobile and interaction technology, when carefully designed, can be a powerful tool in enhancing and disseminating the value of cultural heritage and in utilising the complementarity of museums and their associated sites nearby.