Analysing Smartphone-Based Digital Museum and Cultural Tours

In the last decade, we have seen a proliferation of smartphone devices including within cultural heritage. The accessibility of smartphones has allowed personalised storytelling using a variety of media methods and techniques. However, the method to extract the relevant data and the current design elements used in the market is not readily available outside proprietary bespoke data analytic environments. Therefore, we have combined multiple measures into a framework to analyse the competitors in the production of a digitised art tour. Specially we investigate interface usability, audio, augmented reality, gamification, text, video and 3d models. To evaluate the framework, we have applied the measures across 88 case studies. Case studies were sourced from the Apple AppStore and Google Play Store. The inclusion criteria were cost, novelty, relevancy, and artwork presentation. The apps were tested in simulated environments by using printouts of the artworks and location spoofing.
The results showcase the capability of the framework to filter out relevant apps and design elements. These can then be implemented to inform future developments in the cultural heritage domain. Finally, we present how this framework was used to inform the design and development of an augmented reality indigenous artwork tour.