Tangible Interfaces for VR Cultural Heritage Application - School House Virtual Museum

Abstract

Virtual museums are an important medium for the preservation and dissemination of tangible and intangible cultural heritage as well as for education and public engagement. This is even more important now that focus is being shifted from museum exhibits to the visitors' experience and the increased attention given to their mobility, and the plurality of voices and perspectives represented. To enhance experience and participation new techniques are being developed and multiple senses stimulated. This paper offers venues to unpack the potentials of VR as a pedagogic vehicle when creative and cross-disciplinary experimentation is employed in and around digital museums. Grounded in a particular site of memory, and co-produced with a 'post-memory generation', the School House Virtual Museum is associated with private and silenced memories of past civic resistance in Kosovo. Using written and orally narrated stories, images, videos and immersion within a virtually reconstructed physical space, the experience offers a means to explore spaces, narratives, and technologies relevant to a particular cultural memory and heritage. The main aim of the user study, with 37 participants presented in this work, was to investigate the design of the system, focusing on three aspects: usability, User Experience (UX) and education, and the effect of the tangible interface provided to one user group. The results are overall very positive and confirm that the UX holds potential as a learning and education tool whether in museums, schools, or when used independently.