The study presents the research conducted and the solutions adopted to integrate Extended Reality applications in situ and online to enhance visitors' experience of the Tomato Industrial Museum "D. Nomikos." This paper outlines the methodological, technological, and museological approaches undertaken to integrate XR in ways that will foster the narratives of people who worked at the premises and describe the production process itself. The paper explores the challenges faced throughout the effort to engage audiences and help them relate to the exhibits of the specific facet of Santorini's industrial Past in ways that will not interfere with or draw attention away from exhibits and, at the same time, generate interest. The museum narrates stories to its visitors about the business history of Nomikos' family and time, memories, and the island's inhabitants. Its main scope is to present a flashback to the Past and the cultivation, processing, and production procedure of small-fruited tomatoes. The main challenges concerning the integration of new technologies, such as Augmented Reality (AR) according to the design considerations reflected on the museological scenario, are, in brief, the quest to introduce AR applications in front of exhibits, thereby putting in synergy, digital representations with the actual 19th-century machinery. The main issue is that exhibits are self-referential and, as opposed to a cultural artefact of artwork, do not seem to generate easily personal connections, interpretations, or affective responses as purely practical items. To engage viewers, we developed interactive applications so that visitors will undertake to fulfill workers' tasks as in role-playing. The result of our approach is a balance between coming to close contact through digital narratives with the people of the time while offering a hands-on experience of the process they had to fulfill and a comprehensive description through interactive means of the internal parts and unseeable aspects of the machinery's functions. We aim to adopt a comprehensive museological and technological approach that brings together the actual and the virtual, the human aspect of a bygone era of industrial production sites and processes, as well as bringing to life the technological facet.
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Use of XR technologies for enhancing visitors' experience at industrial museums
Stella SylaiouEvangelia GkagkaChristos FidasElia VlachouGiorgos LampropoulosAntonis PlytasVani Nomikou