A Study of Natural Interactions with Digital Heritage Artifacts

In the context of digital heritage artifacts, this research investigates how best to recreate in virtual space the natural interactions a visitor experiences with artifacts in a museum. The first phase of the research involved observing and documenting visitors’ engagement with paintings and sculptures in five museums in Qatar and then based on the insights gained, building a digital heritage artifact called Al-Lulwa. This desktop application features a collection of photos, songs, and videos about the history of pearl-fishing in Qatar presented as a virtual gallery and an underwater scene. Viewers can navigate and explore this application using either a mouse or eye-gaze facilitated by a Tobii eye-tracker 4c. The next phase of the study involved an experiment with Al-Lulwa that examined the experience of a group of 60 participants, one half of whom were randomly assigned initially to mouse interaction and the other half to eye-gaze interaction. Those participants who used eye-gaze had a significantly higher mean affective response to their mode of interaction compared with users who used a mouse (p-value=2.195e-05). After viewing the virtual gallery and the underwater scene using both interaction modes, both groups of participants had significantly higher affective responses for eye-gaze over mouse interactions (p-values = 4.59e-06 and 1.025e-11 respectively). These results together with further qualitative analysis of the interaction experience provide useful guidelines for improving the design of digital heritage artifacts for real world deployment.