Tag Archives: Krakow

User Experience Design Q&A (CAA2019)

Conference, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, visualisation, , , , , ,

S36: User Experience Design in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage

We were asked as presenters at the “UX design session” at the CAA2019 conference ( in Krakow Poland, 25 April 2019), to answer some questions by the session organizers: Francesca Dolcetti, Rachel Opitz, Sara Perr

Overarching themes to be explored..

  • How, if at all, are we experimenting with critical thinking/reflection in design and value-led design?

As I said, not seriously, in my presentation, I decide to tackle that question by writing a book about it (Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage).

  • What are the spaces in our workflows and practices that afford more experimentation with design?

Spaces: creative spaces are messier with big tables and bigger whiteboards.

Key discussion questions:

  1. What does ‘success’ look like in terms of the user experience (UX) design process for archaeology/heritage? What constitutes ‘failure’ in relation to the UX design process for archaeology/heritage?

My answer is specifically heritage, as I believe archaeology may differ (sometimes).

I think there are 2 main questions:

  1. the user experience of the product/simulation itself
  2. the extrapolated and after-event user experience (what happened after they were in the experience)?
  1. Failure (in a game, AR or VR) means lack of engagement or interest with content or with instructions, lack of understanding.
  2. Lacks memorability, does not lead participant to consider, explore, revisit reasons why we should preserve, conserve or communicate the heritage content and its cultural significance.

NB success is the negation of 1 and 2.

  1. What should the role of archaeologists and cultural heritage practitioners be in the development of UX and User Interface approaches for use in the discipline?

Involved from beginning and during the process, provide expectations of answers, domain expert walkthroughs of content as presented and understood by others, part of audience when results and observations are completed. More specific answers depend on specific context so cannot answer further.

  1. What are the unconscious choices you’ve made in your design processes, of which you later became aware?

Expect the public to notice things that I notice, under-estimate time and attention needed to solve specific problems, double-meaning words like “challenge” in evaluations. Get the participants to appreciate the simulation, (this is NOT what we should be doing).

  1. Are archaeologists and heritage professionals ethically obligated to state the values driving their design practices and explore the role their values play in the process? Why or why not?

This is a difficult question because although I say yes, for me the question is when? DO these values become revealed (if people can clearly reveal their values) during the digital heritage experience, before, or after? Do we want too much attention spent on the designers or archaeologists or heritage practitioners’ values? How much is too much?

  1. What values are implicitly embedded in your design processes and products? Have you ever considered applying ethical, feminist, queer, decolonial, or value-sensitive design? How did – or might – you structure such community-minded design work? And where (i.e., in relation to which processes, outputs, practices, tools, etc.) would you apply it first?
  • I attempt to provide more than one way, strategy, reading etc to complete a task, if specific tasks are required.
  • I attempt to coax the player/participant to make decisions themselves and revise their initial views and tactics.
  • I try to show the messiness, incompleteness of any digital “reconstruction” (OK, they are approximate simulations, recreations at best, not reconstructions).
  • I would like, if possible, to show the process and thinking behind the way simulations are set up and depicted the way they are.
  • I would rather the community engage with the game design first and foremost, rather than the game itself. By designing they have to make design and therefore heritage-related decisions.

I am sure this is very rough and approximate, but I tried to answer it all in ten minutes.

CAA 2019 presentations

archaeology, augmented reality, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, Presentation, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , ,

More for my own use, here are two papers accepted for CAA2019 in Krakow Poland, 23-27 April, 2019.

Author Erik M Champion (Mafi?)

Title Mixable reality, Collaboration, and Evaluation (S36: User Experience Design in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage)

If we are to move past one hit AR wonders like Pokémon Go, scalable yet engaging content, stable tools, appropriate evaluation research, long-term and robust infrastructure, are essential. Formats like WebVR and Web XR show promise for sharing content across desktop and head-mounted displays (without having to download plugins), but there is also a non-technological constraint: our preconceptions about virtual reality. For example, in a 2018 Conversation article “Why virtual reality cannot match the real thing” by Professor of Philosophy Janna Thompson) she argued that virtual reality (and virtual heritage in particular) attempts to provide accurate and equivalent realistic interactive simulations of the existing real world.
VR is not only a possible mirror to the current world. As Sir David Attenborough noted about the Natural History Museum’s “Hold the World” VR application, it provides a richer understanding of process, people can move and view virtual objects that are otherwise fragile, expensive or remote. And it allows people to share their mashups of reality, mixable reality. Collaborative learning can compel us to work in groups to see the bigger picture… your actions or decisions can be augmented and incorporated into the experience. However, there are few studies on collaborative learning in mixed reality archaeology and heritage. This presentation will discuss two projects, (one using two HoloLens HMDs, one a game where two people with different devices must share and control one character,) the theories adopted, and the range of possibilities for evaluating user experience in this collaborative mixed reality.

This is related to part of an article on VR for tourism that was submitted to the online Conversation website, this abstract will be further modified and updated.

Authors: Erik M Champion, Hafizur Rahaman

Title: 3D Models: Unwanted, Unknown, Unloved (Session S37: 3D Publishing and Sustainability: Taking Steps Forward)

Given the importance of three-dimensional space and artefacts to archaeology and to heritage studies, one might therefore assume that publications in the area of virtual heritage are heavily reliant on providing scholarly argument based on 3D models.

To corroborate this hypothesis, we reviewed virtual heritage proceedings of five major digital heritage conferences one could expect to be focused on projects incorporating 3D models. A total number of 264 articles across 14 proceedings were studied, and the results will be tabulated and presented.

The lack of accessible 3D models, usable projects, or ways in which the 3D model could be used and critiqued in a scholarly argument is of great concern to us. We suggest that long-term usage and preservation of virtual heritage models are worrying and persistent issues, and their scholastic impact is severely compromised. We suggest there are least three critical issues: we lack accessible, durable and complete infrastructure, which is essential for storage and preservation; we still don’t have a shared understanding of how to develop, integrate and demonstrate the research value of 3D heritage models; we also lack robust, long-term publication systems that can integrate and maintain both the 3D models and their relevance and functionality in terms of both community engagement and scholarship. We recommend seven practical steps for ensuring that the scholarship going into the development of 3D virtual heritage models, and arising from 3D virtual heritage models, can be fully implemented.