Promoting Industrial Cultural Heritage by Augmented Reality: Application and Assessment

Backgrund: Recent improvements of augmented reality technologies have boosted the design and the development of new solutions to support the user when visiting cultural sites. Each kind of multimedia information can be conveyed to the user in a new and intriguing way. On the other hand, a model to evaluate this kind of AR solutions for cultural heritage still misses. Objective: This paper aims to bridge the gap between applications and assessment by proposing a multivariate evaluation model and its application for an Android mobile augmented reality application designed to support the user during the visit of the historical industrial site of Carpano in Turin, Italy. This site is now a museum that keeps alive the memory of antique procedures and industrial machineries. Method: The proposed assessment model is based on a star like representation, which is often used to denote multivariate models; the length of each ray denotes the value of the corresponding variate. A three-level scale has been chosen for the proposed star-like representation: full length corresponds to the high-maximum level, medium length corresponds to the fair-average level and short length corresponds to the poor-null level. Results: The proposed AR application has been used by 13 people who, at the end of the experience, filled a questionnaire. Subjective feedbacks allowed us to evaluate the application usability. Moreover, the multivariate evaluation model has been applied to the AR application, thus outlining advantages and drawbacks. Conclusion: The presented multivariate evaluation model considers several different elements that can have an impact on the user experience; it also takes into account the coherence of the multimedia material used to augment the visit, as well as the impact of different thematic routes, is assessed.