Inclusive and Engaging Virtual Museum Experience for Children: A

Usability Evaluation

Brigida Bonino

, Franca Giannini

and Katia Lupinetti

IMATI, CNR, Genova, Italy

{brigida.bonino, franca.giannini, katia.lupinetti}@cnr.it

Keywords:

Virtual Reality, Virtual Museum, Inclusion, Engagement, VR Educational Environment.

Abstract:

This study explores inclusive and educational museum experiences in virtual environments for children. Vir-

tual Reality (VR) enables adaptable scenarios tailored to users’ needs, addressing cultural differences and

sensory disabilities. Moreover, it encourages the creation of interactive activities, such as simulating object

manipulation, enhancing immersion and engagement, as well as supporting the understanding of artistic con-

cepts and history. In particular, this work presents the design and development of a virtual museum application,

consisting of two phases: exploration and game. The virtual environment is customized based on the single

user preferences and capabilities to ensure accessibility for diverse groups of children, facilitate an engaging

and playful acquisition of information, and enhance interest in cultural heritage. A preliminary study on us-

ability and engagement is also conducted.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, advances in networking, graphics, and

affordable acquisition devices have made Virtual Re-

ality (VR) a powerful tool for education and cultural

heritage experiences, revolutionizing how knowledge

can be acquired in an enjoyable manner.

For instance, VR allows museum visitors to im-

merse themselves in digitally reconstructed environ-

ments, interacting with historical artifacts and cultural

sites engagingly. Indeed, visitors are not passive; they

have the freedom to explore and be active participants

as they can create their own virtual tour and paths

(Styliani et al., 2009), without the limits of time and

space. In this way, the educational mean provided by

museum can be fully exploited. Moreover, virtual ex-

hibitions can display assets that are normally not vis-

ible in the physical museum, stored in deposits due

to space limitations or fragility, or artifacts from dif-

ferent museums can be collocated together. The ex-

clusive interaction with virtual assets enhances pres-

ence and engagement, fostering deeper emotional and

cognitive connections. VR is especially valuable for

school visits, making cultural heritage more interest-

ing and engaging. By merging gaming with interac-

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4264-3958

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3608-6737

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0202-4909

tive learning, it transforms education into a dynamic,

playful experience that sparks curiosity and creativity

(Bossavit et al., 2018).

A key aspect of the success of VR visits, partic-

ularly for children and schools, is the possibility of

adapting the experience to meet the diverse needs of

users. Social inclusion plays a crucial role in this

context, as accessibility to technology and content

must be ensured for everyone, regardless of physical

or language abilities especially in multiethnic envi-

ronments characterized by strongly different cultural

backgrounds. Adaptive technologies, such as the abil-

ity to customize navigation or include visual and au-

ditory aids, are essential to ensure that every child

can actively participate and enjoy the experience. By

incorporating playful features or quiz games, virtual

exhibitions can attract a wider audience and cater to

various learning preferences, strengthening the con-

nection between cultural heritage, schools, and enter-

tainment (Bossavit et al., 2018).

The work presented here exploits works car-

ried out within the House of Emerging Technologies

Genoa ”Digital Factory for Culture” project and ex-

tended within the PNRR RAISE Project (Robotics

and AI for Socio-Economic Empowerment), Spoke 1

(Urban Technologies for Inclusive Engagement),

which focuses on developing inclusive tools to en-

hance the quality of life of citizens through technol-

ogy and AI. In this context, an immersive virtual mu-

Bonino, B., Giannini, F. and Lupinetti, K.

Inclusive and Engaging Virtual Museum Experience for Children: A Usability Evaluation.

DOI: 10.5220/0013501600003932

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2025) - Volume 1, pages 907-914

ISBN: 978-989-758-746-7; ISSN: 2184-5026

907

seum visit experience followed by a mini-game cen-

tered on the explored cultural assets is being devel-

oped to support primary school students, aged 8 to 11

years, in complementing history learning. The work

addresses the main research question: how to create

inclusive and educational museums in VR? There-

fore it has two primary objectives: inclusion and en-

gagement. Inclusion and accessibility are tackled by

developing methods to adapt the virtual environment

and information presentation to meet the diverse capa-

bilities and preferences of users. To improve engage-

ment, a short game and the possibility to interact with

artifacts are included. While accessibility is needed

to allow a complete experience to a wider range of

users to overcome physical and cultural barriers, en-

gagement is crucial for increasing interest in cultural

heritage and improving learning outcomes.

To ensure an experience that tackles as much as pos-

sible the major difﬁculties in an educational context,

the application is developed with the collaboration of

a primary school characterized by a hight percentage

of children of diverse nationalities, where varying lan-

guage and physical abilities are present. The educa-

tional personnel highlighted how virtual experience

like this can play a crucial role in promoting inte-

gration and providing access to cultural experiences

that may otherwise be out of reach for some students.

Before introducing the tool into education settings,

we conducted a preliminary evaluation of the appli-

cation’s usability, that represents the contribution of

this work. The evaluation focuses on the ease and in-

tuitiveness of setting up the scene prior to the explo-

ration and game phases, the naturalness of interaction

with the virtual world, and the overall engagement of

the visit.

The paper is organized as follows: Section 2

overviews most pertinent efforts in accessible and

inclusive VR and educational gaming. Section 3

describes the proposed virtual museum experience,

while its main features for inclusion and engagement

are outlined in Section 4. The experiments for the

system usability evaluation are discussed in Section 5.

Conclusions are provided in Section 6.

2 RELATED WORKS

To provide an enjoyable entertainment and learning

experience for all visitors, including people with dis-

abilities, virtual museums must not only be acces-

sible, but also inclusive: they must provide greater

equality and cultural and learning opportunities for all

social groups (Caldarelli et al., 2022). In this perspec-

tive, several works have addressed various aspects

related to accessibility for VR applications (Dudley

et al., 2023) in general, and to virtual museums and

cultural heritage, in particular.

While some guidelines exist for physical mu-

seums and web applications considering universal

design principles since several years, only recently

guidelines emerged for VR applications, such as those

indicated by the W3C consortium (W3C, 2021) and

by the XR association (XRA, 2020). Principles of

universal design have been reviewed against VR tech-

nologies for game development by Dombrowski et

al. (Dombrowski et al., 2019). Rojas et al. (Ro-

jas et al., 2020) consider Web Content Accessibility

Guidelines 2.1 for the development of a web virtual

museum. Several works have been devoted to pro-

vide VR access to people with vision problems, gen-

erally creating non visual VR with audio and hap-

tic feedback or providing visual and audio augmen-

tations (Picinali et al., 2014; Zaal et al., 2022; Zhao

et al., 2019). Additional efforts have been made to ad-

dress children disabilities or special educational needs

(Carreon et al., 2022; Campitiello et al., 2022; Chit

et al., 2023) with main emphasis on autism spectrum

disorder, but no real effort has been devoted to adapt

the virtual environment to children needs in virtual

museum exhibition context to effectively make infor-

mation and data easy accessible.

From the engagement and educational point of

view, to reach a broader audience and involve young

people more effectively, making them active partici-

pants and more motivated to acquire information, ac-

tivities such as educational games are often proposed

(Theodoropoulos and Antoniou, 2022; Mortara et al.,

2014). Different interactive games have been pre-

sented in the last years (Liu et al., 2021; Shackelford

et al., 2018), as well as guidelines for designing ed-

ucational games to support the learning of abstract

artistic concepts have been outlined (Bossavit et al.,

2018; Tsita et al., 2023).

However, the intersection of cultural diversity,

physical impairments, and digital games, considered

collectively, remains largely unexplored in this area

of research, with only a few studies addressing these

aspects (Lee et al., 2020; Tillem and G

un, 2023).

The work here presented aims to address this

intersection while focusing on the ability of sys-

tems to adapt to individual user needs and prefer-

ences. In fact, the development of customized inter-

action methods to enhance user engagement is cru-

cial (Bekele and Champion, 2019). This perspective

aligns with the various research outcomes and the XR

and accessibility challenges indicated by W3C (W3C,

2021) and the innovative “design-for-one” philoso-

phy, which prioritizes creating personalized experi-

ERSeGEL 2025 - Workshop on Extended Reality and Serious Games for Education and Learning

908

(a) Exploration phase. (b) Game phase.

Figure 1: 3D reconstruction of the Oriental Art Museum E. Chiossone where the two phases of the application take place.

ences tailored to each user’s speciﬁc requirements,

rather than adopting a universal design approach.

Therefore, in our virtual museum application, we are

considering various settings, interactions and render-

ing capabilities adjustable according to the user char-

acteristics and preferences. In particular, we focus

on some criteria that have been indicated to be fun-

damental to satisfy the accessibility needs of various

disabilities and user characteristics. They include:

easy to read and understand information, use of au-

dio/video in addition to text, different and easy navi-

gation methods, easy reachable interactable elements.

3 APPLICATION OVERVIEW

In this section, we provide a general overview of

the system, highlighting how it has been developed

for educational purposes, structured into two distinct

phases, namely exploration and game, and how the

virtual environment has been designed to offer an in-

clusive and engaging experience.

The environment features digital copies of rooms

and artifacts from the Oriental Art Museum E. Chios-

sone in Genoa. Speciﬁcally, the real artifacts have

been acquired using photogrammetry and 3D process-

ing software, resulting in the 3D models incorporated

into the scene. Most of the artifacts are remains lo-

cated in the Museum deposit, usually not exhibited

due to their fragility of even for space limitation.

Both the exploration and game phases take place

within a simpliﬁed 3D reconstruction of the museum

(Figure 1), speciﬁcally the BIM model of the building

created from a laser scanner survey.

3.1 Exploration Phase

When the application starts, the user is immersed in

the virtual museum. Before the scene is fully ren-

dered, certain variables must be initialized, which

will be discussed in detail in the next section (see

Section 4). Inside the ﬁrst-ﬂoor room, six pedestals

hold artifacts from Japanese history. Each pedestal

is equipped with two interactive buttons: one for dis-

playing text and another for playing audio informa-

tion about the artifact (Figure 1a).

The user can freely navigate the virtual space, ob-

serving and examining the artifacts in any order and

manner he/she prefers. However, he/she must ex-

plore all displayed objects by either reading or lis-

tening to the provided information, clicking at least

one of the buttons. This step is essential for acquiring

knowledge about the objects, their functions, usage,

and historical signiﬁcance, preparing the user for the

subsequent game phase where comprehension will be

tested. There is no time limit, allowing children to

interact with the objects freely, fostering engagement

and enjoyment while learning. Throughout the visit,

users can grasp and scale the artifacts for closer in-

spection, enabling them to examine ﬁne details that

might be overlooked at their original size. This inter-

action not only enhances engagement but also deep-

ens understanding.

Once all objects have been examined, the option

to proceed to the game phase is unlocked. A colored

cube with a question mark appears at the empty side

of the room, where the user must go to enter into the

new scene.

3.2 Game Phase

The game phase is designed to evaluate the effects of

using VR visit on the comprehension of the concepts

acquired during the exploration phase.

At the start of this phase, a new scene is loaded.

The scene variables are inherited from the exploration

phase, ensuring consistency and eliminating the need

for reconﬁguration. The user ﬁnds himself/herself in

the previous museum room, where pedestals and ar-

tifacts have been rearranged. All previously encoun-

tered artifacts, along with additional objects featuring

similar functions but differing in characteristics and

historical periods, are randomly placed on tables in

front of the user. Three empty pedestals are presented,

each equipped with an already visible text panel and

an audio button (Figure 1b). Instead of the previous

Inclusive and Engaging Virtual Museum Experience for Children: A Usability Evaluation

909

descriptions, the text now presents riddles that hint

at the functionality or unique details of the associ-

ated object. The user must match the correct artifact

from the tables to its corresponding pedestal based on

these clues. If the user correctly places an object, the

pedestal changes to the pre-selected color for correct

answers, indicating that the object is properly posi-

tioned and can no longer be moved. If the placement

is incorrect, the pedestal changes to the designated in-

correct answer color, the object remains interactable,

and the user is prompted to try again.

Once all objects are placed correctly, the game

ends and a ﬁnal panel appears displaying the total

number of attempts made.

4 FEATURES FOR INCLUSION

AND ENGAGEMENT

In this section we deeply discuss the variables and

the features that characterize the provided system in

terms of inclusion and engagement for a heteroge-

neous group of users.

In this regard, the scene setup depends on some

variables that are initialized based on user-speciﬁc pa-

rameters, which may be cultural or physical.

Currently, some information is directly requested

from the user before populating the museum scene

through intuitive questions. Among these, the lan-

guage preferred and presence of color blindness.

Other data, such as the user’s height, is automatically

detected via headset positional data. As for engage-

ment, natural interactions are provided to deal with

virtual objects.

4.1 Scene Customization

In the following the scene variables and their ini-

tialization according to user-speciﬁc parameters are

described in detail.

Language. The language barrier can signiﬁcantly im-

pact the understanding of the exhibited artifact with

its cultural, historical and artistic value, thus limiting

both the didactical and the enjoyment values. Infor-

mation is typically presented in the local language,

often with only an English translation available. This

can be especially challenging for children, who may

struggle to follow explanations or understand dis-

played text, leading to frustration and reduced en-

gagement. To enhance inclusion and integration, our

VR system offers a multilingual option, including less

common languages, ensuring a more accessible and

personalized experience. Language selection is the

user’s ﬁrst action, as it deﬁnes the format of all com-

municative content (text and audio) within the scene.

This process is designed to be intuitive and text-free.

When the application starts, a central panel displays

a world map divided by continents, each with an in-

teractive button (Figure 2a). After selecting a conti-

nent, a second panel appears, showing country ﬂags

labeled with their ofﬁcial language (Figure 2b). This

dual-reference system, using both images and text,

prevents confusion, particularly for users with color

blindness. Once a ﬂag is chosen, all text and audio

are automatically provided in the selected language.

The multilingual translation and text-to-speech

conversion is managed by an asynchronous transla-

tion tool we have developed in Python that leverages

two key APIs: Google Translate and Google Text-to-

Speech.

This approach is crucial for improving under-

standing, especially considering the subsequent game

phase, where initial comprehension is fundamental to

foster engagement and learning.

Color. Despite the signiﬁcance of color blindness is-

sue, it is often overlooked in the design of VR experi-

ences. It becomes particularly problematic in games

that rely heavily on color to convey important infor-

mation or differentiate between game elements. VR,

however, offers the potential to overcome this limita-

tion by enabling the customization of color schemes,

making the experience more inclusive and accessi-

ble to a wider range of users. For instance, in many

VR applications, buttons and user interfaces change

color to provide feedback on activation or deactiva-

tion, with green and red commonly used for this pur-

pose. However, this color combination poses a chal-

lenge for individuals with color blindness. To address

this, after language selection, we provide users with

an interactive panel where they can choose a distin-

guishable color pair (Figure 2c). The ﬁrst color repre-

sents positive feedback (e.g., object activation, correct

answer), while the second indicates negative feedback

(e.g., object deactivation, wrong answer). The panel

presents primary complementary color pairs, along

with options that incorporate different textures, se-

lected based on an analysis of studies on color blind-

ness (Tillem and G

un, 2023). The inclusion of tex-

tures further increases the likelihood that every user

can identify at least one suitable pair, ensuring a more

accessible and inclusive experience.

Objects Positioning. The need to adapt the height

of objects and ensure they are comfortably reachable

emerged during the testing of an earlier application.

In that initial version, the tailoring of the virtual envi-

ronment was not yet implemented, which resulted in

usability challenges, particularly for children. These

ERSeGEL 2025 - Workshop on Extended Reality and Serious Games for Education and Learning

910

(a) Continent selection. (b) Language selection. (c) Colors selection.

Figure 2: Panels for language and colors selection for the scene customization.

ﬁndings highlight the importance of dynamic scene

customization to enhance accessibility and provide a

more inclusive and enjoyable experience for all users.

In the here proposed application, this operation is car-

ried out automatically at the start of the game. It is

done taking into account the environmental mapping

characteristics of Meta Quest and the standard human

body proportions. The idea is to set the top of the

pedestals at the height of the user’s elbows to make

the objects well visible and graspable and the buttons

easy to press. According to human body proportions,

the total height of a person is 8 times the head, and el-

bows are at a height of 5 heads from the ground. We

estimate the player’s height by measuring the height

of his eyes thanks to the Meta Quest camera features

and we compute the elbows positions according to the

above proportions.

4.2 Interactions and Content Fruition

Currently the above information are all those re-

quested by the user to customize the experience. In

addition to those characteristics, various methods are

offered to perform speciﬁc operations in a natural,

inclusive, and engaging way. For example, various

locomotion techniques are provided, along with the

possibility to naturally interact with virtual objects,

and the option to either read or listen to the provided

information content.

Locomotion Techniques. Navigating a virtual envi-

ronment is crucial for immersion in VR, but poor im-

plementation can lead to discomfort or motion sick-

ness. This study presents a methodology that adapts

to user preferences, reduces stress, and ensures acces-

sibility for individuals with varying physical capabili-

ties, including those with limited mobility. The appli-

cation features two validated locomotion techniques:

natural and semi-natural (Bonino et al., 2024). The

ﬁrst technique emulates the user’s natural walking

motion, which is mirrored in the virtual environment

using VR headsets equipped with ”room-scale” track-

ing technology that tracks the user’s position in space.

The second technique uses a pointing gesture, en-

abling users to navigate the virtual space without

moving physically. This method allows users to re-

main stationary in their real environment while still

interacting with the virtual one via an HMD.

Both techniques are inspired by real-world move-

ments to create a natural and intuitive experience in

the metaverse and to foster the sense of presence and

engagement (Mott et al., 2020). Also, the elimination

of intermediary devices, enhance immersion. Natural

and semi-natural methods can be used independently

or together, offering ﬂexibility based on user prefer-

ence, needs, and how they perceive the experience,

such as in cases of cybersicknes.

Interaction. A key feature of the application designed

to enhance the virtual experience compared to the

physical one is the possibility to interact with his-

torical assets. This functionality is intended to im-

prove entertainment value, promote playful engage-

ment, and support understanding by enabling users to

explore artifacts in ways that are not possible in a tra-

ditional museum setting, without the risk of break-

ing or damaging objects. In this regard, the provided

application not only allows users to grab objects for

a closer look, but also enables them to scale the ar-

tifacts, making small details more visible than they

would be at their real size. To make these operations

as natural and intuitive as possible, while avoiding the

need for external tools (e. g., joysticks) or additional

commands, the system incorporates free-hand gesture

recognition.

Speciﬁcally, to handle an artifact, the user must per-

form a grab gesture when his/her hand (either left or

right) is in contact with the object (Figure 3a). Once

grasped, the object follows the movement of the hand,

allowing it to be manipulated as it would be in real

life. To uniformly scale the artifact, the user has to

keep the hands with the thumb and the index pinched,

then moves the hands closer or farther apart (Fig-

ure 3b). The object zooms in or out in proportion to

the variation in distance between the ﬁngers. When

the object is brought back into contact with its support

on the pedestal and the grab is released, it automati-

cally returns to its original size and position.

Text and Audio. To enhance the visitor experience

by providing context and information about the ex-

Inclusive and Engaging Virtual Museum Experience for Children: A Usability Evaluation

911

hibited objects in an accessible and engaging man-

ner, the proposed virtual museum exhibition offers

the possibility to both read and listen to the descrip-

tion of each artifact in an interactive and immersive

way. As described in Section 3, on each pedestal two

buttons are arranged that the user can push to respec-

tively show a text panel and play an audio. The panel

is designed to be highly visible and easy to read. It

utilizes a font speciﬁcally created for individuals with

dyslexia (OpenDyslexic, 2024) to enhance readabil-

ity. Additionally, the panel’s position automatically

adjusts to the user’s height, ensuring it appears at eye

level for optimal accessibility. To further accommo-

date users with reading difﬁculties, such as dyslexia

or visual impairments, the audio can be played at any

time, facilitating reading by combining both options.

(a) Handling. (b) Scaling.

Figure 3: Examples of interactions with artifacts.

5 THE EXPERIMENT

In this initial phase, before introducing the application

in schools, we test its usability with adults using the

System Usability Scale (SUS) (Brooke, 1996). The

evaluation covers language and color selection, ob-

jects manipulation (grasping, rotation), objects scal-

ing, information acquisition, virtual museum visit,

and the description-object association game. We as-

sess ease of scene setup, interaction naturalness, and

information accessibility. Additionally, user engage-

ment is measured through the User Engagement Scale

Short Form (UES-SF) (O’Brien et al., 2018), which

evaluates perceived usability (PU), aesthetic appeal

(AE), focused attention (FA), and reward (RW).

5.1 System and Protocol

The system is developed using Unity 2022.3.20f1

with the OpenXR Plugin 1.10.0 for rendering and in-

teraction management. The application runs on Meta

Quest 3, which uses inside-out tracking to detect hand

and ﬁnger movements as well as spatial positioning.

The experiment involves 10 participants (5 men,

5 women), mainly aged 25-34 and 45-60. Most were

native speakers of Italian, English, or French. Two

participants reported accessibility needs: one with

walking impairments and another with low vision. In

conformity with the request made to the ethical com-

mittee, before the experiment, participants were in-

formed about personal data management, research ob-

jectives and instructions on interactions. They com-

pleted the full experience before ﬁlling out the anony-

mous SUS and UES-SF questionnaires. Suggestions

were provided during the experience to ensure all sys-

tem functionalities were explored and tested.

5.2 Results

The System Usability Scale (SUS) score is calculated

based on a questionnaire with ten items, each rated on

a 5-point Likert scale (from 1 = strongly disagree to

5 = strongly agree). To compute the total SUS score,

responses to the odd-numbered questions (1, 3, 5, 7,

9) are adjusted by subtracting 1 from each response

value. Responses to the even-numbered questions (2,

4, 6, 8, 10) are adjusted by subtracting each response

from 5. This transforms all scores into a 0–4 scale.

The adjusted scores are then summed and multiplied

by 2.5 to normalize the total to a 0–100 scale. The

ﬁnal SUS score represents an overall measure of us-

ability. Generally, a SUS score above 68 is considered

above average, while scores above 80 suggest excel-

lent usability (Bangor et al., 2009).

The results of this evaluation are summarized

in Table 1. The evaluations for Getting Informa-

tion (96), Virtual Museum Visit (87.5), Description-

Object Association Game (87), and Color Selection

(86.25) all scored well above 80, indicating a highly

usable and user-friendly experience in these aspects.

A very positive aspect is how the getting of informa-

tion is evaluated, which is crucial for the educational

impact and the understanding of content. Manipula-

tion (84.5) also falls within the excellent range, that is

promising in terms of the engagement and the interac-

tivity of the system. Conversely, Language Selection

(79) and Object Scaling (78) are slightly below the

80 threshold but still above average, suggesting they

are usable but may beneﬁt from minor improvements.

Overall, all categories scored above 68, demonstrat-

ing a good level of usability, with certain areas per-

forming exceptionally well while others could be re-

ﬁned for an even better user experience.

The results of this usability evaluation are highly

encouraging, as they indicate a generally positive user

experience across all categories, with several aspects

scoring in the excellent usability range. Given that

ERSeGEL 2025 - Workshop on Extended Reality and Serious Games for Education and Learning

912

Table 1: SUS Scores for Different Categories.

SUS Categories 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total

Language Selection 2.6 3.4 3.0 3.1 2.3 4.4 2.8 3.9 2.3 3.8 79

Color Selection 1.8 4.3 3.2 4.1 2.6 4.1 3.0 4.4 2.8 4.2 86.25

Object Manipulation 3.0 3.8 2.7 3.3 3.0 3.7 2.7 4.4 3.0 4.2 84.5

Object Scaling 2.4 3.8 2.5 3.2 2.9 3.9 2.4 3.8 2.5 3.8 78

Getting information 2.8 4.5 3.3 4.5 3.5 4.4 3.0 4.5 3.4 4.5 96

VR Museum Visit 2.9 4.4 3.0 3.4 3.0 4.2 3.1 4.1 3.1 3.8 87.5

Association Game 2.1 4.2 2.9 3.6 3.0 4.4 3.0 4.2 3.2 4.2 87

these scores were obtained from typical users, the

next phase is to extend the validation process to a

more diverse audience. This includes involving stu-

dents and individuals with various impairments (e.g.,

motor, visual, and auditory disabilities) to assess the

application’s level of inclusion and accessibility in

greater detail. By conducting targeted testing with

these user groups, it will be possible to identify po-

tential barriers and reﬁne the system to ensure a truly

accessible and user-friendly experience for all.

The UES-SF questionnaire results indicate an

overall positive user experience. They are summa-

rized in Table 2 where the mean scores on a 5-

point Likert scale (from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 =

strongly agree) are reported. The highest score was

for Perceived Usability (4.42), suggesting that users

found the interface and interactions accessible and

functional. The scores for Aesthetic Appeal (3.90)

and Reward Factor (3.97) also indicate that the ap-

plication is visually appealing and provides a satisfy-

ing experience. However, Focused Attention (3.43)

received the lowest score, implying that some users

might have struggled to maintain full engagement

throughout the experience.

Finally, since the variance among the involved

groups did not reveal signiﬁcant differences, we did

not perform an ANOVA or t-test analysis.

Table 2: Mean scores for UES-SF dimensions.

Engagement Dimension Mean Score

Focused Attention (FA) 3.43

Perceived Usability (PU) 4.42

Aesthetic Appeal (AE) 3.90

Reward Factor (RW) 3.97

6 CONCLUSIONS

Immersive VR applications are increasingly used for

educational and entertainment purposes. Among

them, virtual museums and, in general, cultural her-

itage exhibitions stand out for their signiﬁcant educa-

tional, democratizing, and inclusive value, of particu-

lar importance also for schools.

In this work, we present the development of a vir-

tual experience, the ﬁnal application of which is ad-

dressed to primary schools, consisting of an explo-

ration phase and a game phase. The main goals are

two: ﬁrst, to design a virtual environment that is in-

clusive and accessible to diverse groups of users, con-

sidering cultural differences and mild physical dis-

abilities. Second, to create an engaging experience

that supports and enhances the understanding of artis-

tic concepts or cultural heritage assets. Also, a pre-

liminary evaluation of the system’s usability is con-

ducted with adults to validate the implemented func-

tionalities and reﬁne them to optimize the experi-

ence for its ﬁnal use with children. The results are

promising and interesting feedback has been pro-

vided, which deserves further discussion in collabora-

tion with schools and teachers. For example, the lan-

guage selection process is not as intuitive as it could

be. We plan to address this by adding sound feedback,

such as a double-tap on the ﬂag that will allow users

to hear the name of the language in that language.

As future work, we are managing to evaluate the

system in schools with a broader group of users of

different ethnic backgrounds and with various disabil-

ities. In this context, we will also assess the learning

effects by comparing the virtual experience with tra-

ditional methods.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The work has been partially supported by the Ital-

ian Ministry of Business and the Made in Italy

project‘House of emerging technologies Genoa, Dig-

ital factory for culture”, 2023-2025 and by the Eu-

ropean Union - NextGenerationEU and by the Min-

istry of University and Research (MUR), National

Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4,

Component 2, Investment 1.5, project “RAISE -

Robotics and AI for Socio-economic Empowerment”

(ECS00000035). All Authors are part of RAISE In-

novation Ecosystem.

Inclusive and Engaging Virtual Museum Experience for Children: A Usability Evaluation

913

REFERENCES

(2020). Developer guide-Chapter three: Accessibility &

inclusive design in immersive experiences. XR Asso-

ciation.

(2021). XR Accessibility user requirements. W3C.

Bangor, A., Kortum, P., and Miller, J. (2009). Determining

what individual sus scores mean: Adding an adjective

rating scale. Journal of usability studies, 4(3):114–

123.

Bekele, M. K. and Champion, E. (2019). A comparison of

immersive realities and interaction methods: Cultural

learning in virtual heritage. Frontiers in Robotics and

AI, 6:91.

Bonino, B., Thompson, E. M., Giannini, F., Monti, M., and

Lupinetti, K. (2024). Toward Intuitive Locomotion

Techniques in VR: Fully Natural and Semi-Natural

Interaction. In Proc. MetroXRAINE, pages 359–364.

IEEE.

Bossavit, B., Pina, A., Sanchez-Gil, I., and Urtasun, A.

(2018). Educational games to enhance museum vis-

its for schools. Journal of Educational Technology &

Society, 21(4):171–186.

Brooke, J. (1996). Sus: A quick and dirty usability scale.

Usability Evaluation in Industry.

Caldarelli, A., Di Tore, S., Ceccacci, S., Todino, M. D.,

Campitiello, L., and Giaconi, C. (2022). Co-designing

immersive and inclusive virtual museum with children

and people with disabilities: a pilot study. In Proc.

CSCI, pages 1964–1969, Los Alamitos, CA, USA.

IEEE.

Campitiello, L., Caldarelli, A., Todino, M. D., Di Tore,

P. A., Di Tore, S., and Lecce, A. (2022). Maximis-

ing accessibility in museum education through vir-

tual reality: an inclusive perspective. Italian Journal

of Health Education, Sports and Inclusive Didactics,

6(4):1–12.

Carreon, A., Smith, S. J., Mosher, M., Rao, K., and Row-

land, A. (2022). A review of virtual reality inter-

vention research for students with disabilities in k-12

settings. Journal of Special Education Technology,

37(1):82–99.

Chit

u, I. B., Tec

au, A. S., Constantin, C. P., Tescas

iu,

B., Br

atucu, T.-O., Br

atucu, G., and Purcaru, I.-M.

(2023). Exploring the opportunity to use virtual real-

ity for the education of children with disabilities. Chil-

dren, 10(3):436.

Dombrowski, M., Smith, P. A., Manero, A., and Sparkman,

J. (2019). Designing inclusive virtual reality experi-

ences. In Proc. HCII, pages 33–43. Springer, Cham.

Dudley, J., Yin, L., Garaj, V., and Kristensson, P. O. (2023).

Inclusive immersion: a review of efforts to improve

accessibility in virtual reality, augmented reality and

the metaverse. Virtual Reality, 27(4):2989–3020.

Lee, H., Jung, T. H., tom Dieck, M. C., and Chung, N.

(2020). Experiencing immersive virtual reality in mu-

seums. Information & Management, 57(5):103229.

Liu, Y., Lin, Y., Shi, R., Luo, Y., and Liang, H.-N. (2021).

Relicvr: A virtual reality game for active exploration

of archaeological relics. In CHI PLAY, pages 326–

332.

Mortara, M., Catalano, C. E., Bellotti, F., Fiucci, G., Houry-

Panchetti, M., and Petridis, P. (2014). Learning cul-

tural heritage by serious games. Journal of Cultural

Heritage, 15(3):318–325.

Mott, M., Tang, J., Kane, S., Cutrell, E., and Ringel Mor-

ris, M. (2020). “I just went into it assuming that I

wouldn’t be able to have the full experience”: Under-

standing the Accessibility of Virtual Reality for Peo-

ple with Limited Mobility. In Proc. ASSETS 2020,

ASSETS ’20, New York, NY, USA. ACM.

OpenDyslexic (2024). OpenDyslexic: A Typeface for

Dyslexia. Accessed: 2024-01-29.

O’Brien, H. L., Cairns, P., and Hall, M. (2018). A practi-

cal approach to measuring user engagement with the

reﬁned user engagement scale (ues) and new ues short

form. International Journal of Human-Computer

Studies, 112:28–39.

Picinali, L., Afonso, A., Denis, M., and Katz, B. F. (2014).

Exploration of architectural spaces by blind people

using auditory virtual reality for the construction of

spatial knowledge. International Journal of Human-

Computer Studies, 72(4):393–407.

Rojas, H., Renteria, R., Acosta, E., Ar

evalo, H., and Pilares,

M. (2020). Application of accessibility guidelines in

a virtual museum. In Proc. CONTIE, pages 73–79.

IEEE.

Shackelford, L., Huang, W. D., Craig, A., Merrill, C.,

Chen, D., and Arjona, J. (2018). A formative eval-

uation on a virtual reality game-based learning system

for teaching introductory archaeology. In E-Learn:

World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Gov-

ernment, Healthcare, and Higher Education, pages

605–611. AACE.

Styliani, S., Fotis, L., Kostas, K., and Petros, P. (2009). Vir-

tual museums, a survey and some issues for consider-

ation. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 10(4):520–528.

Theodoropoulos, A. and Antoniou, A. (2022). Vr games in

cultural heritage: A systematic review of the emerging

ﬁelds of virtual reality and culture games. Applied

Sciences, 12(17):8476.

Tillem, M. and G

un, A. (2023). Color blindness in the dig-

ital gaming landscape: Addressing critical issues and

research gaps. In ECGBL, volume 17, pages 817–825.

Tsita, C., Satratzemi, M., Pedefoudas, A., Georgiadis, C.,

Zampeti, M., Papavergou, E., Tsiara, S., Sismanidou,

E., Kyriakidis, P., Kehagias, D., et al. (2023). A vir-

tual reality museum to reinforce the interpretation of

contemporary art and increase the educational value

of user experience. Heritage, 6(5):4134–4172.

Zaal, T., Salah, A. A. A., and H

urst, W. (2022). Toward

inclusivity: Virtual reality museums for the visually

impaired. In Proc. AIVR, pages 225–233. IEEE.

Zhao, Y., Cutrell, E., Holz, C., Morris, M. R., Ofek, E.,

and Wilson, A. D. (2019). SeeingVR: A set of tools

to make virtual reality more accessible to people with

low vision. In Proc. CHI, page 1–14, New York, NY,

USA. ACM.

ERSeGEL 2025 - Workshop on Extended Reality and Serious Games for Education and Learning

914