Augmented Reality as a Tool to enhance the Experience of Museum Visitors

Augmented Reality as a Tool to enhance the Experience of Museum Visitors

Larissa Neuburger, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to improve the situation of museums, as visitor numbers in the Federal Museums in Austria have been decreasing over the last few years (Standard 2012). Therefore museums have to change their previous strategy, rethink their approach and include new media technology to stay up to date in order to attract more visitors. Customers do not only want to be consumers but also wish to feel and immerse themselves in the product or service. They now demand information, entertainment, active participation and multisensory stimulation in combination with innovative design elements (Pine II and Gilmore, 2011). Having these thoughts in mind, the aim of this paper is to work with the experience approach, to combine this knowledge with the new technology of Augmented Reality (AR) and finally to explore if the experience of museum visitors can be enhanced using such ways. The following research question aim to address objectives of the paper and pose one overall question:

Does Augmented Reality have the potential to enhance the experience of visitors in museums?

Literature Review

The concept of the Experience Economy evolves from the process of tertiarization of the economy and can be seen as the enrichment of products or services with components of experiences. Declining profits of conventional transactions, new production possibilities due to modern technologies, rising expectations of customers as well as the struggle to escape the everlasting price battles, can be seen as the cause for this development (Weiermair, 2001). Also, the growth of prosperity levels and the affluent society are important factors for the development of the Experience Economy. Therefore there exists a big opportunity to create value by staging experience, as this is a saturated world with mostly undifferentiated goods and services (Pine II and Gilmore 2011). Although the museum sector has achieved a high level of professionalization in the last five years, the focus of museums professionals on the experience of museum visitors is now more important than ever (Falk and Dierking, 2013; Barricelli and Golgath, 2014). Museum visitors are now rather seen as customers or even guests of the museum (John, 2008). Museums The concept of the Experience Economy evolves from the process of tertiarization of the economy and can be seen as the enrichment of products or services with components of experiences. Declining profits of conventional transactions, new production possibilities due to modern technologies, rising expectations of customers as well as the struggle to escape the everlasting price battles, can be seen as the cause for this development (Weiermair, 2001). Also, the growth of prosperity levels and the affluent society are important factors for the development of the Experience Economy. Therefore there exists a big opportunity to create value by staging experience, as this is a saturated world with mostly undifferentiated goods and services (Pine II and Gilmore 2011). Although the museum sector has achieved a high level of professionalization in the last five years, the focus of museums professionals on the experience of museum visitors is now more important than ever (Falk and Dierking, 2013; Barricelli and Golgath, 2014). Museum visitors are now rather seen as customers or even guests of the museum (John, 2008). Museums

of tangible objects, digital technologies and social media (Falk and Dierking, 2013). AR “[…] describes the concept of augmenting a view of the real world with 2

D images or 3D objects [...]” (Woods, et al., 2004). With advancements and developments over the recent years, AR can be

seen as a flexible and practicable tool with high visual quality to overcome the problems of limited space or the high value of exposed objects and additionally support the quality of the museum content (Woods, et al., 2004; Noh, et al., 2009).

Methods

Based on the results of the literature, an empirical research study with an experimental design was conducted in order to strengthen the findings of the literature. Furthermore an AR prototype was developed to be able to test the experience enhancement of the museum visitors. The application was designed to provide background information on the selected artworks of the museum exhibition. An impression of the prototype can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Example picture AR application prototype, Source: Own illustration

The experiment was conducted over nine full-day sessions in the Dommuseum Salzburg. The selection of participants in the museum as well as the assignment to a group was random. Participants of the control group were asked to visit the four rooms of the museum individually and independently. In contrast participants of the experimental group were asked to visit the The experiment was conducted over nine full-day sessions in the Dommuseum Salzburg. The selection of participants in the museum as well as the assignment to a group was random. Participants of the control group were asked to visit the four rooms of the museum individually and independently. In contrast participants of the experimental group were asked to visit the

Based on the research questions and the mentioned research models, the conducted experiment was used to verify following hypotheses:

H1: AR is enhancing the overall experience of the museum visitors. H1 (a-d) is based on the experience model of Pine and Gilmore and representing the different constructs of the model Entertainment (H1a), Education (H1b), Escapism (H1c) and Esthetics (H1d).

H2: AR is enhancing the overall museum experience of the museum visitors. H2 (a-d) is based on the Museum Experience Scale and also representing the different constructs Engagement (H2a), Knowledge (H2c), Meaningful Experience (H2c) and Emotional Connection (H2d):

In order to test the results of the groups on their differences, the independent t-test is used to compare the means of the different groups with the sample size of each �= . Thereby it is analysed if the differences only exist due to random fluctuations or if the differences are explicable significantly (Bühl, 2014). The items of the different constructs of the models were summed up to

a common value for each construct. The different items of the questionnaire were tested with a 7-level Likert-Scale.

Findings

The hypotheses of H1 (a-c) can be accepted as the results showed a significant difference between the two groups in the constructs Overall Experience, Entertainment, Education and

Escapism on a significance level of � < . . The results of the experiment group were higher and therefore show that AR enhanced the experience. Only the result of the construct Esthetics (H1d) could not show significant results. This can probably be explained through the external influencing factors concerning the location of the museum. The hypotheses of H2 (a-c) also show significant higher results in the experimental AR group in the constructs Overall Museum Experience, Engagement, Knowledge and Meaningful Experience again on the significance level of � < . . The construct of Emotional Connection (H2d) also shows significant results but only on a significance level of � < . 5. The values of the results can be seen in Table 1 and 2.

Table 1. T-Test Experience Scale

Analysis Experience Scale * �<.

Variable

Mean Experimental

Mean Control

Effect size d