Research

Case Study 1

A mobile application system for sightseeing guidance using augmented reality.

Furata, H., Takahashi, K., Nakatsu, K., Ishibashi, K and Aira, M. (2012) ‘A mobile application system for sightseeing guidance using augmented reality' in Proceedings The 6th International Conference on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems, and The 13th International Symposium on Advanced Intelligence Systems, 20-24 November 2012, Kobe, Japan. [Online] Available at

https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/document/6505308 (Accessed 08.06.2019).

Situation

Japan, development of AR city tour. Aiming to provide a mobile tour experience which allows real-time feedback and interaction, unlike traditional ‘one direction’ tourist routes which rely on maps and books (Furata, et al., 2012, p.1903).

Factors: material – Wi-Fi and AR, social – interactive and sharing tour, intent – virtual tour guide, allowing independent touring and sharing of interactive components via mobile technology.

Designers role – The case study records attempts to show whether such a proposal is valid. By trialling the system on five people and providing questionnaires for feedback on the experience. (Furata et al., 2012, p.1905).

Task

The designers were trying to achieve a prototype tour that allowed them to predict the best ways to develop a fully interactive AR city tour.

Success measures: Satisfaction with levels of information provided on the tour, interesting and engaging stops along the way, usability for tourist, desire to repeat the experience, general satisfaction with the AR interactivity and network function.

Actions

Research the topic and see what literature, systems already exist.

Develop their project and its aims

Consider how to achieve the project aims, which tools to use and how to present them

Recruit designers

Pilot the system on a small scale and collect feedback

Learn what else could be added in to improve the experience, such as more feedback collated on the system for variety, troubleshooting functional and operational flaws, looking at add ins, such as restaurant menus.

Improve usability by working with traditional tour guides and tourist information providers and identifying local site or marketing tie-ins.

Results

The initial pilot showed that the system did work and those who trialled it were prepared to use it again, they were able to navigate and to interact with the system.

Reflections

In terms of what could be taken on-board for our project:

Socially interactive projects can improve as they are used, reliance on interactive feedback can mean that it takes a while to develop the ideal minimum saturation of shared experiences.

Whilst AR can be a positive experience it is only as satisfactory as the user perceives the end result to be, it needs to enhance the tourism experience and add to their knowledge to be remembered positively.

Maybe link-ins to restaurant menus, locations for example of Vegetarian etc eateries would be helpful, also link in to apps such as ‘toilet locators’ etc.

Case Study 2

The Freedom Tour: A Mobile App Case Study.

Authors

Dina Bailey, Richard Cooper and Jamie Glavic.

Reference: nancyeproctor (2013). Marketing The Freedom Tour: A Mobile App Case Study. [online] Wordpress.com. Available at: https://mobileappsformuseums.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/marketing-the-freedom-tour-a-mobile-app-case-study/ [Accessed 8 Jun. 2019].

‌Situation

Cincinnati, USA - The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

Centre leadership decided that they needed to create a more effective self-guided tour experience for visitors. They carried out a SWOT analysis in 2009 and concluded that ‘the next logical step forward in the self-guided tour experience would be the development of a mobile app.’ (nancyeproctor, 2013)

Material factors: Mobile app for use on mobile devices or on iPods available at the centre, but also online tour experience.

Social factors: Interactive experience with user feedback via in-app surveys.

Intentional factors: Making a mobile tour app available for self-guided visitors that would create a storytelling experience with enhanced content and be far more immersive and complex than the previous keypad tour.

The Designers Role: To produce the script, video and audio pieces needed, and encourage creative collaboration with the Freedom Center staff.

Relationships: The staff provided the historical content and the designers ‘created a script and video elements with the understanding that the Freedom Center would have final approval at the end of each developmental phase’. (nancyeproctor, 2013)

Comparisons to Blue Group’s Covent Garden online tour project:

Blue Group has similar intentions in that we wish to provide an interactive storytelling experience for users of our online tour, with immersive, enhanced content, utilising mobile devices. We also plan to design the script and content, although various sources would be engaged to gather relevant resource materials. We also intend for our design to be web-based, rather than app-based, with content accessed via public wifi or 3G/4G.

Task

The overall project goals for The Freedom Tour were to:

• enhance the visitor experience;
• make the visitor experience available to those who are unable to visit in-person;
• appeal to a wide-ranging and diverse demographic;
• use the app as a tool to spread the word about the Freedom Center and its mission;
• allow for the Freedom Center to update current content, create new content, and access visitor feedback through a user-friendly content management system.

Most importantly, the Freedom Center would own the content on the app and would have the ability to repurpose as needed for workshops, lesson plans and other educational or promotional materials.

Measures of success:

• Number of app downloads;
• participation of walk-up visitors;
• positive visitor feedback from the survey included in the app, at the end of the tour.

Goals defined by: The Freedom Tour project team.

Comparisons to Blue Group’s Covent Garden online tour project:

Blue Group share some of the goals set out by The Freedom Tour project team, particularly in enhancing the visitor experience of Covent Garden, appealing to a wide range of ages and abilities, being able to change content and easily accessing visitor feedback. Similarities in measures of success also exist in terms of participation of visitors and visitor feedback, although the mechanisms for gauging results differ somewhat.

Actions

The following actions took place in the development of The Freedom Tour:

• A company named TourSphere were utilised to develop the app.
• Conversations with other institutions regarding the operational cost and download charge for access to the app.
• The decision was made to make the App available for free.
• 300 iPods were purchased to deliver the tour to visitors at the centre who didn’t have their own device.
• Analysis of museums across the nation, to study what they offered in terms of smartphone tours, rental of devices, and cost to download the app itself. In addition to the visitor-centred analysis, the project team also looked at the cost to the organisation.
• Educators were targeted with presentations created showing them how to use the app for pre/post lessons.
• Training of staff on app tour usability.
• Marketing of the app via TV, local community bloggers, social media, the centre’s YouTube channel, the centre’s website, local sports events.
• Development of a version of the app for other platforms e.g. Android, Blackberry and the web.
• Promotion of the app in nearly all advertising, from hotel guide books to exhibition brochures, including a QR code at the front desk of the museum for visitors to scan and download the app directly to their phones.

Unexpected events:

• The launch of The Freedom Tour was slightly delayed, due to last minute edits and content updates. This scheduling change turned out to be a great asset to the Freedom Center as the launch ended up coinciding with Black History Month, when the institution receives its highest level of news coverage for the entire year - this provided free publicity for the app.
• Apple selected the Freedom Center app as the official iTunes ‘App of the Week’ during the launch month.
• Cincinnati CityBeat named The Freedom Tour the “Best Museum Tour App” in its Best of Cincinnati 2011 issue.
• At the beginning of the app launch, the tour was so popular that it crashed several of the Wi-Fi servers in the museum. The Freedom Center’s IT Department determined that the museum’s Wi-Fi network simply could not handle the demands of 300 iPods pulling data simultaneously from the network, as the initial iteration of the app required. As a result, staff installed a native version of the software with full content installed directly onto the iPods.

Results

The Freedom Center app far exceeded the institution’s visitor usage and download goals:

• At the time of the case study, the Freedom Center app had been downloaded over 40,000 times, in 40 different countries on 6 different continents.
• In the first year 90% of walk-up visitors opted for the mobile app tour compared to 58-60% for the earlier audio tour. On average, 95% of Freedom Center on-site visitors use the app.
• Very positive user feedback.

Reflections

Key lessons to be learned from this case study:

• Thorough research and analysis into what has been used successfully elsewhere is key to successful project design.
• Cross platform compatibility is important to cater for the widest range of users.
• Weighing up the pros and cons of producing your design via an online tool or an app is vital and very much depends on factors such as expected usage and wifi availability.
• Smart marketing of your project can significantly improve interest and uptake by users.
• Timing the release of the project to coincide with an event can massively boost usage.

Case Study 3

Improving history learning through cultural heritage, local history and technology

Authors

Graca Magro, Joaquim Ramos de Carvalho and Maria Jose Marcelino

Reference: Margo, G, Ramos de Carvalho, J. and Marcelino, M.J. (2014) Improving history learning through cultural heritage, local history and technology. Proceedings of 10th International Conference Mobile Learning. Madrid, Spain. [Online] Available: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED557197.pdf (Last accessed 17th June 2019)

‌Situation

The paper’s authors aimed to study how mobile technology can be used to engage local school children when studying local history and cultural heritage. They wanted to determine if designing a curriculum that took advantage of mobile functions such video, photography and communication would motivate students and make teaching history ‘less bookish and more alive’.

This study parallels the aims of our project: to design and develop a resource that aids the user, i.e. anyone wishing to connect and learn about the historical and cultural heritage of Covent Garden.

Although the study is specifically aimed at school children, the strategies used in this study to engage children are also valid across the age spectrum – helping to make knowledge more accessible and adaptable to each user’s needs.

The authors aimed to build upon active and constructivist pedagogies to enable students to gain experience in problem solving, learning in the local context and providing opportunities to improve their digital capabilities.

Task

The authors wanted to use mobile devices as they see the ‘mobility, portability, interactivity, ease of use and their functions such as taking photographs, video and communications’ as being advantageous to learning. Precedents have shown also that mobile devices encourage teamwork, sharing information. Applications enable the bringing together of contextualized information in various formats: text, graphical, video and audio.

The measure of success in this study is based on survey data where students indicated that the activity ‘has helped to know better’ and ‘to realize the value and the meaning of heritage’

The parallels to our project is that we share many of the same goals in that we wish to design an App that involves activities suitable for individuals as well as those that foster sharing and collaboration.

The projects diverge in terms of not being specifically aligned to a scholastic curriculum but includes activities for all ages and digital capabilities

Actions

The authors of this paper:

1. Carried out historical and cultural research of the local area
2. Drafted the historical documentation research needed for the development of the georeferenced historical rout.
3. Relevant information was made available via the Moodle LMS
4. Authors created the route using Active Track software – geo-referenced locations with relevant multi-media content and specific route relevant questions
5. Students used mobile devices (different iOS) to complete the route – The Castle Route
6. Teacher developed a survey
7. Students completed the survey

Results

The survey data showed that the students:

• enjoyed the activity and had a positive experience
• believed that they had learned about the local history and cultural heritage
• demonstrated an awareness the impact individuals have on local history and were able to relate this to their own lives
• enjoyed using the technology to ‘experience history’

Reflections

The use of mobile devices and technologies provides developers with the opportunity to bring education to everyone. This paper showed the capabilities for ‘making come alive’ by active engagement and involved of school age children. I would reflect that the design of the activities implemented in projects such as the Blue Groups project can be harnessed for both formal and informal learning situations. For example, the app developed will be as relevant to local School children following a history curriculum as it is for tourists (of all ages) wishing to learn about the local history and cultural history of Covent Garden.

CASE STUDY 4

Mobile devices: a tool for tourism and learning at archaeological sites

Authors: Alex Ibáñez Etxeberria, Mikel Asensio, Naiara Vicent and José María Cuenca

Reference: Etxeberria, A.I., Asensio, M., Vicent, N. and Cuenca, J.M. (2012) ‘Mobile devices: a tool for tourism and learning at archaeological sites’, Int. J. Web Based Communities, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp.57–72.

Situation

There is an emergency of new forms of recreation associated with cultural tourism in Europe especially in the Mediterranean region of Italy, Spain and Greece. There is a keen interest in archaeological sites, they are thus no longer considered conserved monuments but as cultural, educational, tourist and social resources with great economic potential. Policies and innovations towards this realisation of the above usages are this timely.

[Our project is limited to a museum, moreover artefacts to museums tend to connect or originate from archaeological sites. Perhaps this could be the reason the authors say “ In our understanding, these are the key elements driving the interventions that have been termed the ‘musealisation’ of archaeological sites, concept “currently used in Latin languages to denote the operations necessary to transform a monument or a site into a tourist destination”]

Task

The authors’ task was to evaluate the efficacy of the mobile technologies that seek to immerse the visitor-apprentice in the physical and cultural setting, both current and historical period.

The measure of success was statistics and evaluation reports from beneficiaries of the studied projects

[With reference to Team Blue project, we focus on scalability of usage than numeration of users. Perhaps, a component of evaluation survey to capture the efficacy of our innovation should be put into consideration during the design.]

Actions

- Through use of web of knowledge from ISI Thomson and Google Academic, authors reviewed based on scientific publications such as magazines, books and conference reports.

- Concrete searches began by using archaeological site and mobile device as first order key words and then added second-level terms like cultural heritage, cultural tourism, mobile learning, personal digital assistant (PDA) and global positioning system (GPS), cellular phone, archaeology or informal learning.

- Identified virtual reality (VR2) and AR3 and second, the geographic information system (GIS) as methods of implementation that we to be studied more critically through data mining.

- The study was limited by lack of concrete evidence to backup what users claimed and happy and satisfied with the innovations.

Results

- It was established that GIS and geocaching techniques with mobile devices are clearly oriented toward educational purposes. Their basic objective focuses on the development of integrated curriculum programmes that utilise different educational levels and heritage objects, as well as the spatiotemporal axes of teaching geography and history.

Reflections

- Although users of the programmes acknowledged satisfaction, satisfaction appeared to be highest among the younger population.

- Despite being marked by technological innovation, other values like mobility, independence, motivation or educational innovation come into play.

- Utilisation of mobile devices improves motivation, autonomy of learning and attitude toward the content.