Development and Evaluation of an Outdoor Multisensory AR System for Cultural Heritage

Enhancing tourist visits to cultural heritage sites by making use of mobile augmented reality has been a tendency in the last few years, presenting mainly audiovisual experiences. However, these explorations using only visuals and sounds, or narratives, do not allow users to be presented with, for example, a particular smell that can be important to feel engaged or to better understand the history of the site. This article pursues the goal of creating an experience that puts the user in a scene planned to evoke several stimuli with SensiMAR prototype – a Multisensory Augmented Reality system that aims to be used in cultural heritage outdoors. When using SensiMAR, the user will be involved with visual reconstructions, surrounded by the soundscape of ancient times, and is exposed to a particular smell very common that time. Given the novelty of this proposal, ascertaining the usability of such a system was raised as a foremost demand. Thus, in addition to its development and implementation specifications, an experimental study was conducted to evaluate the usability of the system in end-users’ perspective. The results obtained from random visitors of an archaeological site were analysed according to their sex, age, previous experience with augmented reality technology, and provided condition – audiovisual condition, and multisensory condition, with visual, audio, and smell stimuli. Results were collected from a total of 67 participants and show that this multisensory prototype achieved good usability results across all groups. No statistically differences were found, demonstrating good usability of the SensiMAR system regardless of their sex, age, previous experience with the technology or provided condition.

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