Augmented museum experience through Tangible Narrative

Abstract

This paper is about an interactive and tangible storytelling installation based on the principle of ubiquitous museum. The installation is designed to focus children’s attention on the sailing practice in the Medieval age by engaging children in an experience where they interact with several ancient navigation tools, equipped with sensors and communication capabilities. The networked infrastructure is combined with the approach of tangible narratives to augment the museum experience. We conducted a pilot study with three different groups of participants in order to investigate the interaction with the augmented ancient navigation tools. We used quantitative and qualitative data to get feedback on participants’ engagement while interacting with diegetic and non-diegetic objects and on factors that can impact engagement. Even though preliminary, the results can be useful to designers of ubiquitous museum installations to know possible risks and factors to take into account at design time.