1. Introduction
Several advances have been made in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that allow the deployment and distribution of information in multiple or different devices. Access to the Internet and the mass use of it through mobile devices and PC technology has become very attractive for cultural and archival institutions to interact and show content to the community through digital channels [
1]. Before, the only way to appreciate these tangible heritages was by visiting the museums and other cultural institutions in person.
Virtual reality (VR) technology has become important for providing users with unique experiences due to the high sense of immersion that increases their perception and, in some cases, provokes the sense of being there (presence) [
2,
3]. It is important to note that the experience of appreciating art in person is irreplaceable. However, this technology allows the creation of contextualized virtual environments that focus on users’ experiences. Some studies have even shown that an immersive visualization environment can help enhance learning [
4].
VR technologies are becoming more widespread and popular. The market for VR software and hardware is expected to grow rapidly in the next few years, with an estimated growth from 2019 to 2022 of 6.2 billion dollars (USD) to more than 16 billion (USD). The countries that spend the most on VR technologies are the United States and China [
5].
This technology has several applications in different fields such as training [
6], applications for people with special needs [
7], education [
8], and tourism [
9,
10], among others.
In particular, VR technology can be used in museums, with the creation of virtual products. An example of a virtual product is the display of objects through the use of virtual or augmented reality. In this way, the use of VR in museums modifies the way users interact with museum content, bringing the content closer to them [
11]. Virtual products are regularly used in a variety of ways in the areas of tourism and cultural heritage, for example, for research, reconstruction, preservation, documentation and dissemination of cultural heritage. Thus, the use of VR technologies and virtual products can be considered an important tool for promoting and conserving cultural heritage [
12]. Using technology to preserve cultural or natural heritage is known as digital heritage [
13], which also includes various technological products that are used in computer-based applications, including software, text, audio, images, etc. In addition, in the use of serious games, augmented reality has been shown to engage and motivate participants to learn about cultural heritage [
14].
The use of virtual products and digital heritage is also relevant to the idea of a virtual museum, a concept that has existed since even before widespread access to the Internet [
15]. The growth of VR technologies, however, opens even more opportunities for virtual museums. For example, objects from multiple collections and even multiple museums can be combined into a virtual experience, without the limitations of physical infrastructure, thus giving users greater access to museum content [
16]. Moreover, the use of these technologies has shown that an immersive VR environment relates to the user’s motivation to physically visit a museum [
17].
In this context, users can see and experience different aspects, including, a real sensation of perspective in a 3D environment, depth for interacting with their hands, and a first-person field of view, among others. These aspects enhance the experience inside of a virtual world.
Therefore, it is relevant to explore the use of this technology in the creation of experiences that show, in a creative and unique way for users, the visualization of tangible aspects, such as the 3D museum pieces, and intangible aspects, such as cultural background.
Thus, the question to be addressed in this work is: how can we use this technology to create an experience of a virtual museum for VR Head Mounted Displays (HDM) with a central narrative that invites users to know, visit and live the experience? To answer this question, we propose the use of VR technology and develop an experience for Oculus GO [
18] and Quest [
19] HDM of a virtual museum with a 3D environment, interaction with 3D objects (local museum pieces), gamification, and contextualized information.
With all this comes a need to consider a wide audience so that the experience also serves as a tool to invite potential visitors to learn more about the local museum.
We used Unity 3D game development software [
20] for the development of scalable and modular software. This software should meet five important criteria:
Ease of use;
Consideration of virtual reality motion sickness;
Implementation of interaction mechanics with the 3D historical pieces;
Integration of different pieces through a central narrative;
Scalability of the experience.
The present paper is structured as follows: first, the design and creation strategy is explained with its five steps, introducing the materials and methods used to create the VR experience, including an explanation of the use cases of the application, design process, digitization of 3D pieces, and usability test; second, we present the results, which are principally the main features of the software; and finally, we describe our conclusions and future work, including some recommendations based on the experience of the development and comments on each step of the design and creation strategy.
2. Methodology
The methods used in this research follow the design and creation approach [
21] to create a VR experience and the software that runs it. The design and creation research strategy focuses on learning through making. It is an iterative process with five steps: awareness, suggestion, development, evaluation and conclusion [
21,
22]. A brief description of each step is given, and then the rest of the methodology section is structured around each of these steps, explaining the use of this strategy in the development of the virtual museum.
In the first step, awareness, a problem is defined, which can come from literature, field research, new technological developments, or from practitioners that express a need for something. In the case of the virtual museum in the present paper, the problem came from the need of local museums to attract more potential visitors and a younger generation. This goes hand in hand with the arrival of stand alone HDM virtual reality technology to the end-user market.
In the second step, suggestion, a tentative idea is created for how the problem can be resolved. For the present work, this step included use cases as part of an iterative process to create a design idea for the virtual museum. We describe two general use cases with their key components and main functionalities. It also consisted of the creation of a central narrative to guide the VR experience. A short explanation is also given of the design of the main character in this narrative, a tutorial scene, and the user interface and environment. In this methodology section, the first two steps (awareness and suggestion) are combined due to the overlap in these processes.
Development, the third step, consists of implementing the design idea. For the current virtual museum, this step included the creation of software that responded to the needs of local museums and incorporated the new developments in virtual reality technology. In particular, the digitization and optimization of the 3D pieces are explained, along with their mechanics in a contextual graphic interface. It is important to note that the results of the implementation of this design idea are not addressed in this methodology section of the paper but rather in the following results and conclusion section. The methodology section instead presents a sort of guideline for the use of the design and creation strategy in the development step.
In the fourth step, evaluation, the developed artifact is examined, its contributions are assessed, and any unexpected results are explained. In the case of the current paper, usability testing and analysis were carried out, a description of which is offered below, including the participants and procedure. The usability test performed included a VR motion sickness questionnaire [
23], with 33 participants. Once again, the results of the evaluation are presented in the results and conclusions section, while this methodology section focuses on guidelines of what was done for the evaluation.
The fifth and final step, the conclusion, collects and summarizes the design process results, identifying what has been learned and what still needs to be examined, such as deviations from expectations that could be explored in future work. These conclusions will be addressed in the final sections of the paper, including the discussion section.
2.1. Awareness and Suggestion
2.1.4. Design of the GUI and Environment
When designing interactive systems like the virtual museum, it is important to give the user an experience that is enjoyable, easy, and effective to use. For that purpose, the basic guidelines of interaction design were followed, which involves identifying user needs, establishing requirements, developing design alternatives that meet those requirements, building interactive prototypes and evaluating the design throughout the process [
28].
The user interface (UI) is the point of action where a user interacts with a product, machine, or systems of all kinds. The objective of the UI is to allow the operation and control of the system/product in an easy, simple, and effective way. The UI plays an important role in the creation of a friendly visual environment between the user and the technology; therefore, for this version of the VR experience, appropriate and adequate interfaces were designed for this platform in order to provide a satisfactory user experience. The ease with which the user moves between the real world and the virtual world depends on the way the information is delivered to the user; hence, when designing the interface, it was necessary to consider the environment in which the experience would take place, the desired content to display, and the graphic style that would be used to display that content.
The interface design is one of the most challenging aspects in the development of a virtual experience, considering that the virtual environment (VE) is a form of human–computer interaction itself. In a VR system, the user interacts with helmets, glasses, gloves, and controls, among others.
The interface design of the virtual museum can be considered minimalist, as it uses thick and simple shapes and lines—a neutral design that works well in virtual reality environments. Details will be specified below.
The user interaction with the system is done through the HDM and a controller with a pointer, with which users can select options and explore the environment. To ensure that the virtual environment was efficient, effective, and satisfying to use, the interactions were designed so the user can explore easily and intuitively. In addition, it was considered that the visual representations of the virtual environment should correspond to the user’s usual perception in a real environment. After several brainstorming sessions, it was defined that the user will interact with the VE through a system of curved panels that will surround the user in order to make them feel immersed in the virtual space. This “closed virtual space” is intended to establish a moderate limitation of movement in virtual space in order to make the user feel safe and prevent them from becoming disoriented (especially taking into account that these devices are new for the target audience in the local region). It is also important to emphasize that the curved menus that surround the user in a virtual space in three dimensions (3D) allow a better visualization of images and text reading [
29]. In the panels, users will be able to find all the contents, collections of pieces and any other related information that can be explored by the user, see
Figure 1.
The collections of pieces will be displayed on the panels with a carousel-like menu, where the user can select and inspect each piece, zoom in and view its details, as well as access the technical information of the piece. For the creation of the museum stage, elements and colors characteristic of the colonial style were used, such as lanterns, tiles, wood, and cobblestones, among others.
The use of the controller allows the user to interact with the information in the panels, so the object can be selected, manipulated, and rotated if desired. This works through a laser system that allows the user to manipulate the controller as if they were manipulating the object, giving a sense of realism to the experience.
The interfaces were tested and evaluated throughout the development of the software by a group of users, which meant a continuous process of iterations in the design to obtain the best possible interface for the VR experience.
3. Results and Conclusions
In this section, the results will be discussed, showing how users interact with the software. Afterward, in the Discussion section, several key points will be drawn from the development process.
As shown in the previous sections, software has been developed with the design and creation methodology, and it was tested with users. This process is iterative and is made up of several cycles in which each output is the first input for the next cycle. These cycles are short in order to minimize problems of design or programming. Traditional testing was also performed, such as black box and white box testing of the software, and the first release was made considering all the improvements and conclusions of the usability testing.
The main experience can be divided in four different sections: (1) tutorial and introduction scene; (2) collections of 3D pieces; (3) VR casual games and (4) information about local physical museums.
4. Discussion
This research aimed to design and develop a virtual museum with virtual reality technology that belongs to the local context with both intangible and tangible cultural aspects focused on the Maule region of Chile. The main contributions of this work are: (1) what has been learned and can be recommended based on the present experience of using VR technology to create a contextualized virtual museum, combining objects from multiple physical collections into one virtual collection that are united into a central narrative guided by a character drawn from local heritage; (2) the discussion about the experience of using a collaborative, iterative methodology resulting in software that invites users to know, visit and live the experience, the five steps of which are described with examples from the current work.
With respect to the first point, some recommendations can be offered on how to develop a culturally contextualized virtual museum. The present work suggests that this type of application could be used to help disseminate information about local museums, promote them and encourage users to visit them; therefore, an important recommendation is to include several actors in the development process from museums (such as curators) and target users. In the current work, a prototype was made and shared with these actors, allowing refinement of the prototype for future iterations. Another recommendation in the creation of a virtual museum is to allow users to enjoy the VR experience at their own pace. It is important to note that a full guided experience was purposefully avoided because users need to choose what to see and for how long, which details are important to them, and if they want to access to more information, and these are the types of behaviors that can be seen in a real visit to a place of this kind. Furthermore, it is recommended for a virtual museum to enrich the interactive feature that can not be obtained in other experiences, such as videos or online shows where users just see what is shown for them. An additional recommendation is that the resolution of the digitized pieces needs to be correlated with the HMD that will be used for viewing them. As stated previously, the VR experience was developed for Oculus HMD devices. The digitization process was done with a framework that utilizes photogrammetry and a 3D scanner. It was important to consider which devices end-users will use to view the pieces and balance the resolution accordingly to optimize how they are visualized.
With respect to the second point, a methodology was followed that allowed the development of a VR experience considering users, creativity, digitization and software development. The following are some comments about the experience of using the design and creation strategy.
As described in the methodology section, the design and creation strategy consists of five steps: awareness, suggestion, development, evaluation and conclusion. Although traditional methodologies of development of software are focused on the end-user, in this study, end-users were also included in the creation process. Some key elements are important to note from this process. For the development of a VR experience, creativity is needed, just like the creation of video games (or other interactive software) requires a creative process, to make a useful and unique product for the end-users. This is where the awareness and suggestion steps of the design and creation strategy play a major role. This software product does not come from a client, but rather from a convergence of visions and discussions on the need of local museums to disseminate information using new technologies, and it required creativity to design a tentative idea of how to address this identified need and opportunity.
In the development step of the design and creation strategy, the VR experience was developed based on the creation of prototypes in an iterative process, which allowed quick iterations, testing features and improvements to the experience in each cycle. Some of the main advantages of this software that grew out of this process are: (1) it is an attractive and new technology for a wide audience, especially for young people; (2) the experience has a character to make a connection with the environment and let the user decide how and what to explore at their own pace; (3) it has functionalities for visualization of 3D pieces that are innovative and are the product of a usability test and users’ opinions; (4) it has good definition balance of 3D pieces and optimization of the models for the VR experience; and (5) games are part of the experience for different audiences. Finally, it is worth stating that the addition of new functionalities in this VR experience are technically straightforward to implement because the software was made with Unity 3D with modular architecture and components.
In the evaluation step, the usability testing and analysis showed how important it is to include users in the developing process as it allows the design team and developers to identify issues before fully coding. In this way, it is easier to find errors and problems of interaction in the early stages of the development process, in order to improve the product and consider what the end-user needs to have an experience without UX issues. Therefore, it is less expensive to make changes in terms of the time required for the new development and its impact on the final result. In addition, getting feedback from the VRQS was another important process to include; because the VR technology is relatively new for the end-user, it is important to test and modify some designs or interactions that could cause some of the reported symptoms. The VRQS showed that for a majority of the users, the experience does not produce any of the described problematic symptoms (the symptoms only appeared in special cases, as was previously described), which means that a good user experience has been delivered. With the digitizing process and a correct balance of the number of polygons and textures of the 3D objects, the experience does not present lags in its use and display of programmed interactions.
Further work should be centered not only on ways to improve the software–user interaction but also to evaluate the impact of the virtual museum on users’ attitudes toward the virtual experience, learning about cultural heritage pieces, or visiting a real museum. A better understanding of how the users’ attitudes are formed or change as a result of an experience in a virtual museum would allow the development of better experiences for them and, potentially, a higher sense of community and belonging.
Similarly, another area of interest for future work is to compare differences between the type of technology in which the software can be used on users’ attitudes and intentions to visit a real museum. Since the 3D objects have already been digitized, multiple different experiences could be developed, such as a typical visualization on a computer (on a web browser, for example, Sketchfab), a VR experience, a PC experience, or an interactive totem. Knowing this is crucial not only for technological reasons but also for making accessible the content of cultural heritage to different groups of the population that might vary in their socio-economic backgrounds.