Connecting Intangible Cultural Heritage and Architecture through Mobile Augmented Reality Narratives and Scale Models

Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) represents living cultural expressions and practices, which communities recognize as part of their cultural heritage. The preservation and transmission of ICH becomes a very important project since it is the mainspring of humanity's cultural diversity. Various approaches have been proposed to disseminate living cultural expressions and practices that utilize modern technologies beyond the mere digitization of ICH content. Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) is a promising technology along this path that enables the overlap of digital and real-world information, in an engaging and efficient manner. However, this technology is still relatively new and has not been studied extensively in terms of user experience, interaction between users and virtual objects, and learning the historical aspects of ICH. The current paper presents a mobile augmented reality installation that illustrates the stages during the leather tanning process. The installation uses a scale model of the tannery which augments animated 3D content aiming for an educational experience. The experimental AR installation focuses on transferring the cultural value of the leather tanning process, combining the architectural heritage using the scale model and the intangible cultural heritage through digital representation. An exploratory study was performed to examine the impact of the installation on the users' engagement, experience, and learning. A number of interesting conclusions emerged about the proposed solution. Out of this experience, we outline several issues regarding the usability of the proposed augmented reality installation and the overall users' experience.