Bridging Curatorial Intent and Visiting Experience: Using AR Guidance as a Storytelling Tool

Augmented Reality (AR) visits enhances the art exhibition experience by overlaying digital content. Although there has been significant interest in AR guides, few works leverage AR to bridge curatorial intent and audiences understanding. This paper focuses on integrating the curatorial intent within the AR overlays by developing the narrative layers established by the relationships between works. We develop a narrative system that identifies and links the primary art pieces of the exhibition within a digital story consistent with the curator’s perspective. The system is applied to a physical exhibition composed of seven art pieces. We evaluate the impact of AR overlays through two user experiments, conducted on art professionals and general audience, respectively. Both groups considered that the AR tour system improved interactivity, self-reported learning, and user satisfaction significantly (> 4/5). Besides, visitors found the system easy to get to do what they want to (4.7/5), and would use it for future visits (4.6/5). This study raises essential design considerations towards designing integrated AR museum guides that combine the perspective of artists and curators towards a better visiting experience.