In this lesson, we present four scenarios (i.e. in-the-wild studies), in which interactive phygital prototypes were designed and deployed in real-world heritage and museum environments [Nofal, 2019], we explore how the seamless integration of digital technology into physical reality facilitates the communication of built heritage information to museum visitors and how it affects user engagement.

• In the first example (Saqqara Entrance Colonnade), through a between-group comparative study in a real-world museum context, we examined how the tangible characteristics of an interactive museum prototype influence how visitors understand tacit knowledge of built heritage;
• In the second example (Nimrud Relief), through a field study in a real-world museum environment, we investigated how an augmented reality experience impacts the architectural contextualization of an isolated artifact from the Nimrud palace in Iraq;
• In the third example (Graethem Chapel), through an in-the-wild study, we investigated how an in-situ interactive projection mapping enables the communication of the spatiotemporal transformation of a medieval chapel that occurred during the last 850 years; and
• In the fourth example (Neferirtenef Tomb-Chapel), through a field study in a real-world museum environment, we investigated how a tangible gamification installation supports informal cultural learning of young museum visitors and how it encourages collaboration among them.

Those four phygital prototypes were designed to communicate different forms of built heritage information in several contexts. The four prototypes benefited from emerging technologies and phygital approaches, and they were created with rapid fabrication in FabLab using materials such as MDF wood and 3D printing polymers. All of the prototypes were deployed in real-world heritage environments to reach different types of visitors. The four prototypes varied in terms of the heritage information to be conveyed, the approach and design of the interaction, and the overall experimental study.

References

• Nofal, E. (2019). Phygital Heritage: Communicating Built Heritage Information through the Integration of Digital Technology into Physical Reality. PhD Thesis, Department of Architecture, KU Leuven, Belgium, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20718.25920