Comparison of Wearable Optical See-through and Handheld Devices as

Platform for an Augmented Reality Museum Guide

Sule Serubugo, Denisa

Skant

arov

a, Lasse Kjærsg

ard Nielsen and Martin Kraus

Department of Architecture, Design, and Media Technology, Aalborg University,

Rendsburggade 14, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark

Keywords:

Augmented Reality, Museum Guide, Smartphones, Smart Glassess, Gamiﬁcation, Interactive Storytelling.

Abstract:

Self-service guides are a common way of providing information about artworks exhibited in museums. Mod-

ern advances in handheld mobile applications and wearable optical see-through devices that use augmented

reality offer new ways of designing museum guides that are more engaging and interactive than traditional

self-service guides such as written descriptions or audio guides. In this study we compare wearable (smart

glasses) and handheld (smartphone) devices as a platform for an augmented reality museum guide. We have

developed a museum guide for both a smartphone and smart glasses that can identify artwork, direct the vis-

itors’ attention to speciﬁc details in it, as well as engage them through a game. The platforms are compared

based on participants’ preference feedback and game performance, and are also evaluated by a coordinator

from a collaborating museum. We conclude with a discussion of potentials of these platforms as augmented

reality museum guides and suggest promising future work.

1 INTRODUCTION

While written descriptions or audio guides are com-

mon ways of providing self-service guidance in mu-

seums, they are limited in the way information is pro-

vided. Audio guides, for instance, are limited to only

listening, and often, the viewer might not know which

part of the artwork the guide is referring to. There is

also often a lack of elements that would stimulate vis-

itors to interact with the artwork. Currently, a new

trend of smart devices has evolved that has the ca-

pability to promote active participation for visitors of

cultural heritage sites. Devices such as smartphones

or smart glasses allow visitors to get more involved

in the museum experience. Furthermore, recent de-

velopments in new media such as games, augmented

and virtual reality, and interactive storytelling, have

brought new effective ways of experimenting with im-

mersion in virtual storyworlds (Lombardo and Dami-

ano, 2012).

With these advances in both smart technologies

and immersive media, several researchers (Chang

et al., 2014; Tillon et al., 2010) have found new ways

of addressing limitations of traditional guides. By

using tablets and smartphones, their studies devel-

oped handheld augmented reality (AR) guides that

superimposed virtual descriptions and graphics on

artworks. Besides the handheld guides, there have

also been advances in wearable optical see-through

technology (smart glasses) which have introduced a

different approach towards overcoming these limita-

tions. Both smartphones and smart glasses have ad-

vanced functionalities such as camera, audio, image

display, and touch input, which allow for new exciting

ways of presenting cultural heritage narrative content

and making it interactive. These platforms have their

pros and cons. Handhelds are very accessible since

most people own a smartphone, while smart glasses

are hands-free. They both have the capability to be

used as self-service museum guides, however there

has not yet been a study that has compared them in

this context.

This work therefore aims to investigate this gap

and evaluates which of the guides is more intuitive

to use, provides better guidance and involves or en-

gages visitors more in the museum’s artworks. We

developed a museum guide for both platforms that can

direct visitors’ attention to where they should look

at in an artwork while a narrative is presented. Fur-

thermore, the guides also include a game where users

have to match clues shown on the device display to

that of the physical artwork. To compare the two

platforms, an experiment was set up, where partici-

pants evaluated the guides in questionnaires and semi-

Serubugo S., Å

akantÃ ˛arovÃ ˛a D., KjÃ˛ersgÃ

erd Nielsen L. and Kraus M.

Comparison of Wearable Optical See-through and Handheld Devices as Platform for an Augmented Reality Museum Guide.

DOI: 10.5220/0006093901790186

In Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2017), pages 179-186

ISBN: 978-989-758-224-0

179

structured interviews. In addition, the participants’

game performance was logged to evaluate how in-

volved or motivated they were during the experience.

This paper presents the following main novelties

and contributions:

• A comparison of smartphone and smart glasses

as devices that can be used to develop AR self-

service museum guides.

• A discussion of how to develop AR museum

guides for smart glasses.

• A discussion of how to design and implement an

AR game that works on both handheld devices

and smart glasses.

The paper continues with an in-depth look at re-

lated work in Section 2. In Section 3, we describe how

the museum guides were implemented, and how they

were compared in an experiment. Results from the

experiment are presented in Section 4 and discussed

in Section 5. Lastly, we conclude on our ﬁndings in

Section 6.

2 RELATED WORK

AR displays can be categorized into different types,

which include head-mounted, handheld, and spatial

displays, etc. In their paper, Bimber and Raskar

(2006) state that the augmented image can be formed

at different places along the optical path between the

eyes and the physical object. For the smartphone,

the image is formed on a handheld display, while for

the smart glasses, it is generated on a wearable head-

mounted display. In both cases, the image is gener-

ated on a plane. To combine the augmented graphics

with the physical scene, the smartphone uses a tech-

nique called video-mixing, where a live video stream

of the physical scene is combined with the rendered

augmented graphics and this combination is displayed

on the screen. The smart glasses on the other hand

use a technique called optical combination, where the

augmented graphics are rendered and projected in the

viewer’s ﬁeld of view, which makes the graphics ap-

pear as if they were in the physical scene. Both wear-

able optical see-through and handheld devices have

been used in various research projects in the cultural

heritage context.

Wearable optical see-through devices have been

researched by Dalens et al. (2014) and Baraldi et

al. (2015) who implemented computer vision meth-

ods on devices such as Google Glass to recognize

paintings in real time, and detect hand gestures which

visitors could use to naturally interact with the art-

work. These studies however did not test user ex-

perience. Bower and Sturman (2015) examined the

potential of wearable technologies, where they iden-

tiﬁed affordances such as experiencing various sce-

narios that otherwise would be risky or not possible

(e.g. a tour in a medieval village, zooming in), raising

involvement and engagement, communication, real-

time guidance, feedback, and gamiﬁcation.

In parrellel, handheld AR guides have been ex-

plored by Damala et al. (2008), Chang et al. (2014),

and Tillon et al. (2010). Findings from these stud-

ies have shown that AR guides recieved positive

feedback and helped participants to better appreciate

paintings. A few participants in Chang et al.’s (2014)

study however found the tablet heavy and inconve-

nient. It could be investigated whether wearable op-

tical see-through devices can have an advantage since

they are hands-free.

Several of the presented works were concerned

with improving visitors’ experience in cultural her-

itage settings. In order to evaluate these improve-

ments, Othman et al. (2013) proposed a Multimedia

Guide Scale that can be used to evaluate guides in

terms of general usability, the quality of interaction,

and learnability & control. Othman et al. (2011) also

proposed a Museum Experience Scale for the purpose

of evaluating the experience, where the guide can be

evaluated through engagement, knowledge & learn-

ing, meaningful experience, and emotional connec-

tion. Although these scales were not tested on AR

guides, they can be used as inspiration when compar-

ing the handheld and wearable AR guides in terms of

enhancing the user experience.

Engagement and active participantion with the art-

works have been explored by Rubino et al. (2015) and

Schmalstieg and Wagner (2007) who have included

gamiﬁcation in handheld AR guides. Through use

of storytelling adventure games and pervasive games,

their studies suggest that games are an engaging way

of bringing an active role to the visitors, and thereby,

increase their satisfaction during the museum expe-

rience. These studies indicate that games could also

be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the guide and

compare handheld AR guides with wearable optical

see-through AR guides. The work presented in this

paper took inspiration from several of the related stud-

ies and developed a museum guide that was used in an

architectural museum.

3 MATERIALS AND METHOD

To investigate the use of wearable optical see-through

and handheld AR museum guides for self-service

guidance, two conditions were designed: a handheld

GRAPP 2017 - International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

180

AR guide condition and a wearable AR guide condi-

tion. The guides were evaluated in terms of the overall

museum experience they provide, visitors’ involve-

ment and engagement into the artworks, and their sat-

isfaction with the guidance. Our assumption was that

the handheld AR guide would be perceived as more

intuitive and easier to use. On the other hand, be-

cause the augmented graphics in the smart glasses are

directly in the viewers’ ﬁeld of view and appear as if

they were in the physical scene, we assumed that the

wearable AR guide would provide a more engaging

experience and involve the visitor more with the art-

works.

A game was included to assess how easy visitors

would ﬁnd it to interact with and explore the artwork.

Our assumption was that a high game performance

with a good score and a short completion time would

imply that the visitors were engaged and the guide

was intuitive to use and interact with, while low per-

formance or long completion time would imply low

engagement or less intuitive interaction.

3.1 AR Museum Guide Design

The design of both wearable and handheld AR guides

consisted of several parts: interactive storytelling and

gamiﬁcation, tracking the artwork, and superimpos-

ing the graphics. Furthermore, two artwork collages

were used, which were part of the exhibition “Fata-

morgana: Utzon meets Jorn” at the Utzon Center mu-

seum in Aalborg, Denmark. The two collages can be

seen in Figure 1, where two men are surrounded by

their inspiration from each other’s ﬁeld. Artist Asger

Jorn is on the left and as can be seen, images in his

collage are of architectural buildings. Architect Jørn

Utzon is on the right, surrounded by artistic images.

Figure 1: Asger Jorn collage (left) and Jørn Utzon collage

(right).

3.1.1 Interactive Digital Storytelling and

Gamiﬁcation

The objective of the museum guide was to present in-

formation about Jørn Utzon, Asger Jorn, and their in-

spirations from art and architecture, which inspired

them to collaborate on designing Silkeborg Museum

for exhibiting Asger’s art. In the actual exhibition,

there was a big text panel describing the two men and

the images in the collages were given numbers. Vis-

itors could then read the description to get a general

understanding of each of the collages, as well as read

the names of the images based on their numbers in a

small text panel on the side of the collages. All infor-

mation was available in both Danish and English be-

cause the museum had both Danish and international

visitors.

Figure 2: The introduction stage with the pointer directing

attention (top) and the game stage with clues in the game

panel (bottom).

Our guide system used this information and en-

hanced it by adding audio, visuals, and interaction. To

present the guidance, a narrative was created, which

consisted of three stages: introduction, exploration,

and game. The structure of the narrative was inspired

from the complete graph narrative structure, where

the visitor can access information and parts of the nar-

rative in any desired order (Ryan, 2001). Once the

visitors approached the collage, they could use the

device as a guide. They would start by selecting the

language to be used during the guidance and after-

wards, the introduction was played in form of audio

with a pointer to guide the visitors’ attention to the el-

ement being presented. The introduction covered the

description information from the big text panel, and

when it was ﬁnished, the guide proceeded to the sec-

ond stage – the exploration. Here the user could in-

teractively select images in the collage for more spe-

ciﬁc information that was inspired from the small text

panel. In the corner of the guide display, there was a

Comparison of Wearable Optical See-through and Handheld Devices as Platform for an Augmented Reality Museum Guide

181

“Game” button, which when clicked caused the user

to go to the third stage – the game, as seen in Figure 2.

The game involved matching the clues displayed

in the game panel to the images in the collage. These

clues were small images cut out from ﬁve of the col-

lage’s images, where the objective was to match the

clue and image correctly within three attempts. If the

visitor matched them correctly on the ﬁrst attempt,

they would get 20 points, on the second attempt 13

points, and on the third attempt 7 points. Thus, if all

clues were matched correctly on the ﬁrst attempt, the

visitor would get 100 points. Every clue had corre-

sponding audible information that related to the im-

ages in the collage and was inspired by the small text

panel. This information was played when the clue

was presented for matching. Audio feedback was

given when the visitor found a match or made a mis-

take. Upon completing the game, information that

was otherwise not displayed in the collages was nar-

rated to the visitor as a reward. For Asger Jorn, the

visitor would learn that he invented three-sided foot-

ball, and for Jørn Utzon, they were told that he wanted

to be a sculptor, but was convinced by his uncle to be-

come an architect.

3.1.2 Augmented Reality Setup

The equipment (see Figure 3) used for the handheld

AR guide was a Samsung I9100 Galaxy SII with a

display size of 4.3 inches, screen resolution of 480 ×

800 pixels, an 8 megapixel camera, and a weight of

116 grams. For the wearable AR guide, a set of Ep-

son Moverio BT-200 smart glasses was used, which

had two LCDs, each with the size of 0.42 inches, a

screen resolution of 540 × 960 for each eye, a ﬁeld of

view of 23 degrees, a VGA front camera, and a weight

of 88 grams. Users interacted with the smartphone via

touch directly on the display, while the smart glasses

had a touchpad connected. The interaction mecha-

nism for the touchpad was similar to that of the smart-

phone, however the display and the touchpad were

two separate units. Both devices ran on the Android

4 operating system, which allowed for the guide to

be developed as an application with the 32-bit Unity

5.3.1f1 game engine. Unity made it possible to build

the application on Android and also to use the Move-

rio SDK plugin for the smart glasses.

The Vuforia SDK v5.0.10 plugin for Unity was

used to track the collages. No additional ﬁducial

markers had to be set up in the exhibition because

the collages were used directly as tracking markers.

Tracking was possible by using the frontal camera on

the glasses and the back camera of the phone. When

the collages were not in the camera’s view, a message

“Lost picture...” would be displayed at the bottom of

Figure 3: Platforms for the AR guide: Epson Moverio BT-

200 smart glasses connected to the touchpad and Samsung

Galaxy I9100 SII.

the guide’s display. Once the camera was tracking one

of the collages, the application would play its content.

If tracking was lost again, the application would sim-

ply pause until tracking was resumed. To enable the

system to recognize the two collages, they were up-

loaded to Vuforia’s Target Manager, where features

were detected in the images and stored in a database.

Therefore, the guide was able to automatically iden-

tify the two physical collages via its camera, and su-

perimpose the augmented graphical content on them.

3.2 Experimental Procedure

To compare the smartphone and the smart glasses

AR guides, an experiment was designed as a within-

subjects experiment and conducted at Aalborg Uni-

versity, where the collages were exhibited to simulate

the museum setting as shown in Figure 4. 34 partic-

ipants, 20 males and 14 females, aged 21 - 28 (M =

23.35, SD = 1.86) were tested. All participants had

previous experience with touch mobile devices, while

none of them had experience with smart glasses. 47%

stated that they had used traditional museum guides

during their museum visits. 38% of the participants

had normal eye sight and did not use prescription

glasses or contact lenses.

Figure 4: Test setup.

Each test session started with a short demographic

questionnaire to learn about participants’ background

GRAPP 2017 - International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

182

and their experience with museums. This was fol-

lowed by instructions on how to use one of the smart

AR guides, after which the participants used it to un-

derstand either Jørn Utzon’s or Asger Jorn’s collage,

as shown in Figure 4. They then got instructions for

the other guide before trying it on the second col-

lage. By pseudorandomizing the order in which par-

ticipants tried the smart AR guides and experienced

the collages, bias was prevented. The guidance pre-

sented in the device had three stages. An introduc-

tion that presented the collage. An exploration stage,

where participants exploratively interacted with the

separate images in the collage by clicking to hear

more information. After clicking on a minimum of

ﬁve images, they could move on to the game stage,

which consisted of matching clues displayed in the

guide’s graphical user interface to images in the col-

lage.

During the three stages, the guide logged data in

a ﬁle for assessment, which included how much time

each participant spent completing each of the three

stages, how many images they clicked in the explo-

ration stage, and their score from the game. After go-

ing through all stages for each smart AR guide, par-

ticipants ﬁlled out a questionnaire, where they evalu-

ated their experience with that guide on a seven-point

Likert scale. The topics of the evaluated questions

were inspired from the Multimedia Guide Scale and

the Museum Experience Scale proposed by Othman

et al. (2011; 2013), as is shown in Table 1. Lastly, a

short semi-structured interview was conducted to get

more insight in the participants’ experience.

Besides the experiment, the smart AR guides were

presented to the exhibition coordinators at the mu-

seum to get some insight into which smart AR guide

they felt worked well for the exhibits. Their feedback

was important to evaluate the guides in a practical set-

ting and assess whether this new technology could po-

tentially be used for their exhibition professionally.

4 RESULTS

4.1 Questionnaire

Ratings obtained from questionnaires were plotted in

boxplots shown in Figure 5, which also present the

means. These ratings were statistically analyzed us-

ing a two-tailed Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and corre-

lations between them were calculated using Pearson’s

product-moment correlation. In addition to responses

from the questionnaire, feedback was obtained from

semi-structured interviews. This was used to better

understand the results from the questionnaire. The

Table 1: Questionnaire to evaluate both smart glasses and

smartphone as museum guides (7 point scale: 1. Not at all,

7. Very much).

ENGAGEMENT

Q1: To what extent did the guide engage you to the

exhibit?

Q2: To what extent were you experiencing the ex-

hibit, rather than just visiting it?

Q3: To what extent did the guide connect you with

the exhibit?

GUIDANCE

Q4: To what extent did the guide direct your attention

where to look in the exhibit?

Q5: To what extent did the guide help you understand

the exhibit?

INTERACTION & INTUITIVENESS

Q6: How easy was the guide to use?

Q7: How easy was it to learn how to use the guide?

Q8: How intuitive was it to interact with the guide,

e.g. clicking buttons and clicking on images?

GAMIFICATION

Q9: To what extent did the game in the guide involve

you in the exhibit?

OVERALL SATISFACTION

Q10: To what extent were you overall satisﬁed with

the guidance the guide provided?

Q11: If the guide was available for your next museum

visit, to what extent would you like to use it?

Wilcoxon signed-rank test analysis of the ratings (see

Table 2) showed signiﬁcant differences between the

smartphone and the smart glasses for how easy the

guides were to use (Q6: p = 0.0096) and how easy it

was to learn how to use the guides (Q7: p = 0.0090) in

favor of the smartphone guide. Similar results could

also be found in the interviews, where seven partic-

Figure 5: Smartphone and smart glasses ratings for Q1 to

Q11 (P = smartphone, G = smart glasses).

Comparison of Wearable Optical See-through and Handheld Devices as Platform for an Augmented Reality Museum Guide

183

ipants mentioned that the smartphone was easier to

use and focus on. Smart glasses, on the contrary, had

a higher rating in engagement (Q1: p = 0.072, Q3: p =

0.075), although no signiﬁcant difference was found.

Table 2: Ratings from all participants compared in

Wilcoxon signed-rank test (* = p <0.05).

Smartphone Smart Glasses

Question M SD M SD p-value

Q1 4.74 1.16 5.27 1.19 0.072

Q2 4.61 1.39 4.94 1.37 0.31

Q3 4.74 1.56 5.24 1.37 0.075

Q4 4.88 1.53 4.41 1.76 0.18

Q5 4.97 1.09 5.09 1.22 0.57

Q6 5.71 1.36 4.65 1.63 0.0096∗

Q7 5.94 1.01 5.27 1.40 0.0090∗

Q8 5.65 1.32 5.27 1.76 0.13

Q9 4.77 1.42 4.62 1.65 0.76

Q10 4.85 1.33 4.71 1.62 0.58

Q11 4.24 1.81 4.50 2.14 0.59

During the experiment, it was observed that fe-

males and males had divided opinions about the two

smart AR guides, and therefore the statistical data was

split for genders. Results showed that females did not

ﬁnd any of the guides signiﬁcantly different from the

other. However, males reported differences on intu-

itiveness and found it signiﬁcantly easier to learn how

to use the smartphone (Q7: p = 0.049). Males also felt

that the guide presented on the smart glasses engaged

them in the exhibit more than the smartphone (Q1: p

= 0.017, Q2: p = 0.022, Q3: p = 0.0064).

There was no signiﬁcant difference between the

two smart AR guides in the ratings on guidance, gam-

iﬁcation, and overall satisfaction. Pearson’s product-

moment correlation, however, showed that the partic-

ipants’ ratings on whether they would use the guide

if available in the museum, had a high degree of cor-

relation with ratings on engagement (Q1: r = 0.61,

Q2: r = 0.63, Q3: r = 0.59), understanding (Q5: r

= 0.56), gamiﬁcation (Q9: r = 0.52) and the overall

satisfaction with the guide (Q10: r = 0.75).

4.2 Performance and Time Data

Interaction, game score, and time data was analyzed

using a two-tailed two-sample t-test, and a Fisher’s

exact test was used to analyze how many clues par-

ticipants matched correctly in the game. As can be

seen in Figure 6, participants took longer time inter-

acting with the smart glasses than the smartphone.

They spent signiﬁcantly longer time during the ex-

ploration stage (p = 0.00008) and during the overall

experience with the three stages (p = 0.00002). The

time spent for the game stage alone was, on the other

hand, not signiﬁcantly different for the two guides (p

= 0.055), and the introduction stage was ﬁxed and

took approximately 60 seconds for both. Similar to

the questionnaire, these signiﬁcant time differences

also show that the smartphone was easier to use and

interact with. In the exploration stage (see Figure 7),

participants clicked ten images on average when us-

ing smart glasses, which was signiﬁcantly more com-

pared to the smartphone where only six images were

clicked on average (p = 0.0002). This shows that

participants were more engaged when they used the

smart glasses to interact with the collage.

Figure 6: Time spent using the guides. Introduction stage

was ﬁxed and took 60 seconds.

Figure 7: Images clicked in the exploration stage and scores

in the game.

During the game, participants scored 94.6 points

out of 100 on average when using the smartphone,

as shown in Figure 7. This was signiﬁcantly higher

compared to the average of 85.6 points when using

the smart glasses (p = 0.0093). Participants using

the smartphone were also able to match signiﬁcantly

more clues in the game correctly (smartphone M =

4.9, smart glasses M = 4.6, p = 0.044).

4.3 Semi-structured Interview

In the interviews, participants were asked to evaluate

which of the guides made the exhibition most fun. 26

participants said that it was the smart glasses, while

the remaining eight said it was the smartphone. The

Fisher’s exact test showed that signiﬁcantly more par-

ticipants found the smart glasses more fun (p = 0.043).

Ten participants admitted that part of the appeal for

smart glasses was because they “are new” and that

they “have not tried them before”. On the other hand,

seven participants said that with the smart glasses,

they “felt more part of the exhibition” and “did not

have to look through a secondary screen”.

Despite being more engaging, the smart glasses

were however found to be “heavy” as mentioned

GRAPP 2017 - International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

184

by seven participants. Six participants experienced

“dizziness”, “pain in the eyes” or “headache”, and

three participants felt that “it would be a problem to

wear them for a long exhibition”. Similarly, partici-

pants also experienced some challenges while using

the smartphone. Nine participants mentioned that it

was “tiring for arms to hold it up” in front of the exhi-

bition and ﬁve participants found the screen too small,

saying that “it was hard to see the images”. How-

ever, six participants mentioned that they could “see

the whole collage at once”, which allowed for bet-

ter overview. This also enabled them to better follow

and understand the guidance of the pointer than on the

smart glasses, where as mentioned by seven, “it was

easy to lose the pointer”.

In terms of which guide provided a better under-

standing of the exhibit, 11 participants said that it was

the smartphone, six said it was the smart glasses, and

12 felt that it was the same for both guides. Over-

all, several participants gave positive feedback to the

guides saying that “the glasses are very nice and en-

gaging” and “the smartphone gives a lot of freedom”.

4.4 Expert Feedback

The following section presents thoughts from one of

the exhibition coordinators at the collaborating mu-

seum.

A problem that he saw with the smart glasses was

that the ﬁeld of view was very small to get an aug-

mented reality feeling. He mentioned that the inter-

action on the smartphone was better because you felt

that “the frame in the picture that you clicked on is

more like a button, while on the glasses the touchpad

felt more like an extraneous element”. He said that

the smart glasses could become something in the near

future, but currently he thought that “the technology is

not there yet”. He added that “everything works better

on the phone”, also because it is an element that peo-

ple can take with them. “There is something special

about it being your own guide. People can just get a

QR-code, scan it and get the app. It is cheap, easier

and you do not have to walk around, looking like a

sci-ﬁ dude”.

Smart glasses felt like they were about to “fall

down”, which he thought will be challenging for

many people using them. He said that they have

something in terms of the experience and will be seen

more in the future, however he did not think they were

there yet. Ultimately, he felt that the smartphone has

the potential to cover part of the exhibition, however

the smart glasses only have the potential if they can

cover the whole exhibition. “With the smartphone,

you can come with it and use it on part of the exhibi-

tion, whereas the smart glasses will have to be placed

in front of the picture and people will have to put them

on and off during their visit”.

5 DISCUSSION

The experiment investigated the use of smartphones

and smart glasses as platforms for self-service mu-

seum guides. Five main topics were considered for

evaluation: engagement, guidance, interaction & in-

tuitiveness, gamiﬁcation, and the overall satisfaction.

For the engagement, responses from participants of

the experiment showed that the smart glasses AR

guide was more engaging than the smartphone, and

participants were able to experience the exhibit, rather

than just visit it. However, the expert feedback from

the exhibition coordinator in the museum did not

seem to show the same results. He found the smart-

phone to be a better guide and felt that the technology

for smart glasses still needs to be developed before it

can be applied in the museum. This seems to show

that the context, in which the guides are considered,

matters. In their current state, he saw the smartphone

more applicable, accessible, and ﬁnished, but admit-

ted that the smart glasses could have potential in the

near future.

The smartphone was evaluated as better by partic-

ipants in the experiment in terms of guidance and in-

teraction & intuitiveness. This was less experienced

on the smart glasses, which could have been due to

the small ﬁeld of view as was also mentioned by the

exhibition coordinator. Furthermore, the touchpad

of the smart glasses seemed more challenging and

slower than interaction through touch on the smart-

phone screen. Further research is therefore needed to

develop better interaction, for example, by use of nat-

ural hand gestures.

Gamiﬁcation added to the two guides did not pro-

vide a signiﬁcantly different experience, but engaged

participants in the exhibit. Several participants were

very excited to try it out and it showed to be a good

way of involving them into the exhibits. Rating on

the overall satisfaction with the guide did not show

any signiﬁcant differences, and participants would

use both guides if they were available in the museum.

6 CONCLUSION

This work investigated use of smartphones and smart

glasses as a platform for delivering narrative con-

tent for an augmented reality museum guide. Results

showed that smart glasses can better engage visitors

Comparison of Wearable Optical See-through and Handheld Devices as Platform for an Augmented Reality Museum Guide

185

into the artwork compared to the smartphone. On the

other hand, the smartphone is easier and more intu-

itive to use while interacting with the artwork com-

pared to the smart glasses. Based on the interview

conducted with an exhibition coordinator, the smart-

phone from a practical point of view seems to be more

suitable as a platform for a self-service guide due to

its intuitiveness, availability, and its interaction mech-

anism. Nonetheless, ﬁndings from the study have also

shown potential for the smart glasses. Several partic-

ipants who tried them out liked the fact that they did

not have to hold them up or experience the exhibition

through a secondary screen as was mentioned for the

smartphone. However, the smart glasses need more

technological advances to make them more comfort-

able to use in the museum. These advances include

expanding the ﬁeld of view, making the user interface

less straining for the eyes to look at, and making the

smart glasses more comfortable to wear.

Future studies should investigate which designs

and interactions would work well on the smartphone

and which would ﬁt the see-through screen of the

smart glasses. This study has focused on artworks that

were two-dimensional such as collages and paintings.

However, further studies should also consider three-

dimensional artworks like sculptures and physical ar-

chitectural models, and research how to deliver nar-

rative content for such objects. Furthermore, future

work should also investigate new ways of introducing

gamiﬁcation using such augmented reality guides and

how to target different visitor groups, since it was ob-

served that gamiﬁcation can be an effective way of in-

volving visitors into the artwork. Lastly, the study has

shown that both smartphones and smart glasses have

their strengths and weaknesses, which when devel-

oped appropriately will potentially enhance the mu-

seum experience of visitors.

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