This paper would like to discuss the design trade-offs that might emerge during the development of technological solutions for promoting and enhancing the fruition of cultural heritage. To this aim, the paper briefly describes the UniBSArt4All project, which employs advanced interactive technologies, such as artwork recognition and wireless sensors, to obtain engaging and accessible visitor experiences customized to different users' profiles. By reflecting on the project development and its preliminary results, the paper finally proposes a meta-design approach to inclusive design in the CH domain.
In our everyday life, we often encounter trade-offs, namely situations where we need
to renounce to something in order to gain something else. Problem solving usually
represents such a situation, in which a solution must be designed by taking into
account both the goals one would like to satisfy and the different constraints that
impose choosing among those goals. Therefore, usually design “is the identification,
discussion and resolution of trade-offs” [
Indeed, as underlined by Gerhard Fischer, a design problem does not have a correct
solution or a right answer, but the solution or the answer depends on the values and
interests of the involved stakeholders [
As an example, UNESCO promotes the preservation and enhancement of CH, two
activities that are themselves in trade-off, since enhancing CH might imply altering it
in some way. However, thanks to Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs), nowadays it is possible to address both needs, by fostering the enjoyment of
CH in new ways and, at the same time, by sensitizing people about its importance and
fragility [
The last trade-off is actually the starting point of our research in this domain.
Assuming that culture is the basis of development of critical skills for democratic
participation [
In this position paper, we briefly recall the preliminary results of the UniBSArt4All
project, aimed to promote a new use and development of advanced interactive
technologies for accessible CH [
The app is composed of four sections (see bottom bar in Fig. 1(a)): • Homepage, which shows a brief description of the museum, including opening hours, and the last news. • Museum, which, according to a step-by-step interaction, allows the user to access museum floors, rooms, artworks and artwork details (Fig. 1). • AR screen, which uses the photocamera and the Wikitude service (https://www.wikitude.com) to recognize the artwork, and then presents artwork details near the image captured by the photocamera (Fig. 2). • Bluetooth screen, which uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology (also “beacons” in the following) to detect the closest artwork, in order to present, similarly to the AR screen, some information related to that artwork. For example, Fig. 3 shows a pop-up that tells the user that two artworks have been found. (a) (b) Fig 1. Child’ view of artwork description (a) vs ‘blind’ view suitable to screen readers (b).
Accessibility of contents are managed through the user profile. In particular, on first access to the app, the visitor may declare to be a child, a tourist or a scholar, and the app will select automatically the contents that are most suitable to that type of user. For instance, children may enjoy a description suitable to their reading skills and have the possibility to vote the artworks they like (Fig. 1(a)).
The app also allows tailoring content and interaction according to the possible disabilities of the user. In particular, in the user profile, one may declare a hearing or visual impairment, thus allowing the app to adapt its interaction possibilities. For instance, in the case of visual impairment, the app provides voice-over features and organizes the pages in a way suitable to screen readers and selections made by visually impaired users (Fig. 1(b)). In this case, beacons are used to detect the closest artwork and tell the user all related contents. If more than one artwork is detected, a simplified pop-up, suitable to visually impaired users, is shown (and told) to allow artwork selection. In case the user declares to have a hearing impairment, suitable videos are proposed, including subtitles or descriptions through sign language.
Museum curators may use a web-based EUD tool to manage the structure and contents of the app (Fig. 4). In this way, it allows an easy adaptation of the project to any type of museum. This tool allows curators to create the museum floors and their related rooms, as well as all data associated to the artwork objects available in the museum, with the specific contents related to the different user profiles. Moreover, they may easily assign beacons and photos to artwork IDs for easy retrieval at run time. Through the EUD tool, the curators can also manage user accesses and monitor visit trends.
The whole system has been preliminarily experimented in a monumental complex belonging to the University of Brescia, in Italy. The mobile app and the EUD tool are the result of an iterative activity carried out by an interdisciplinary team including software designers, architects and civil engineers, who are experts in ICT, CH preservation and promotion, and urban universal design, respectively. The development process started with the software designers that would like to demonstrate to the other members of the team how low-cost AR and Bluetooth technology could be used to enhance CH experience. Interestingly enough, experts in CH and universal design were worried that these technologies were not considered as an aesthetic experience in itself, but that were regarded as a new medium of communication with CH. Therefore, software designers first created some scenarios and mock-ups, and then started developing interactive prototypes of the mobile app by taking visitors and their needs, backgrounds and physical characteristics at the center of the design activity. The other members of team were constantly involved in the evaluation of the different stages of the project.
In this way, a variety of issues emerged during the development of the app, also as a consequence of team’s discussions and brainstorming: from personalization and accessibility needs of the users, to technology flexibility due to environment constraints (e.g., WiFi access), from long-term sustainability by museum curators, to the extendibility of the project to other CH contexts.
These issues led us to adopt a meta-design approach [
Following Schön’s idea of “reflection-on-action” [
Figure 5 illustrates these dimensions. Three of them are related to the
characteristics of visitors (the human side of the socio-technical system under
development [
Inclusive design for CH thus requires software designers to adopt a meta-design
approach that allows them to create all the socio-technical conditions for system
development, deployment, maintenance, and evolution, as well for its acceptance by
all the involved stakeholders – visitors and curators above all. In particular, curators
should be supported in the end-user development [
Accessibility of CH must be understood as the possibility to ‘enter into a
relationship’, to ‘establish a two-way relationship’ between humankind and art and
make intelligible the message that is transmitted in approaching CH. Actually, in
recent years, the role of cultural heritage has been radically rethought, placing the
emphasis not so much on why to protect it, but on who will benefit from this
protection [
In this perspective, ICT can provide a useful support for the comprehension of CH
by providing different users with a ‘tailor-made’ tool. On the contrary, ICT cannot
substitute physical accessibility because the unique way to have a real knowledge of
CH passes through being there, walking through the architecture, and having a direct
experience. Thus, ICT can be considered a way to foster CH enhancement, which
consists, according to the Italian Code of the Cultural and Landscape Heritage, in “the
exercise of the functions and in the regulation of the activities aimed at promoting
awareness of cultural heritage and ensuring the best conditions for use and enjoyment
of the public assets, even by persons with disabilities, in order to promote the
development of culture […]” [
To address these issues, we propose the adoption of a meta-design framework that helps developers and domain experts take into account all the different aspects related to the inclusive design of ICT for CH enhancement. As future work, we are planning to carry out an in-depth experimentation of the developed system and possibly deploy it in different real contexts, in order to collect proper feedback for refining the metadesign framework and the system itself.
Acknowledgments. This research has been carried out within the Interdepartmental Laboratory Brixia Accessibility Lab (BrAL) of the University of Brescia. The authors would like to thank Davide Sansoni and Emanuele Trivella for the development of the applications presented in the paper, and Ivana Passamani for the fruitful discussions. This research has been funded by the project “Work, Wealth, Production, Productivity”, Programme “Health & Wealth 2015” of the University of Brescia.