Towards using mobile, head-worn displays in cultural heritage: User requirements and a research agenda

Augmented reality (AR) technology has the potential to enrich our daily lives in many aspects. One of them is the museum visit experience. Nowadays, state of the art mobile museum visitor guides provide us with rich personalized, context aware information. However, these systems have one major drawback - they force the visitor to hold the guide and to look at its screen. The utilization of smartglasses technology allows providing a wearable AR display without the necessity to hold the guide and to look at it and without distracting the user from the real object. This paper describes initial steps towards the implementation of a head-worn display (HWD) museum visitor guide - the results of users' requirements elicitation process, the implementation of a first research prototype and initial insights gathered during the process.