The Role of Haptic Feedback and Gamification in Virtual Museum Systems

This paper reports the results of a research, aimed to evaluate the ability of a haptic interface to improve the user experience with virtual museum systems. In particular, two user studies have been carried out in order to: (1) determine similarities between visual and tactile experiences during manipulation of a 3D printed replica of an artefact with a pen like stylus and of a 3D reconstructed artefact using the considered haptic application and (2) compare the user’s perceived usability and user experience during the interaction with the haptic application interface, both gamified and not gamified, and with a mouse-based interface, based on the SUS scale and the AttrakDiff2 questionnaire. A total of 65 people were involved. The considered haptic application is based on the haptic device Omega 6 produced by Force Dimension and it is a permanent attraction of the “Museo Archeologico Nazionale delle Marche”. Results suggest that the proposed haptic interface is suitable for use by people familiar with mouse-based computer interaction, but without previous experience with haptic systems, and provide some insights useful to better understand the role of haptic feedback and gamification in enhancing user experience with Virtual Museums (VM), and to guide the development of other similar applications in the future.