User Experience on Enjoyable Informal Learning via Mobile AR: Development and Evaluation Ulka Chandini Pendit, Syamsul Bahrin Zaibon, and Juliana A. Abubakar Abstract—Mobile augmented reality is recommended to be implemented at cultural heritage sites to enhance visitor’s experience. Visitors enable to learn informally about the cultural items, values, and history of the sites while enjoying their visit. However, at our initial study, it is found that such mobile augmented reality has not been implemented atcultural heritage sites in South-East Asia region including Malaysia. Therefore, this study proposed a mobile augmented reality application, named as AR@Melaka, has been successfully developed to help visitor to have enjoyable informal learning in Melaka heritage sites. This paper describes the design and development of AR@Melaka including designing the user interfaces and creating content. In addition, the evaluation results of AR@Melaka are also presented. There were 200respondents involved, and majority of them agreed having an experience ofafter using the application. In summary this study shows the importance of enjoyable informal learning experience for visitors at cultural heritage sites. Index Terms—cultural heritage site, enjoyable, informal learning, mobile augmented reality ———————————————————— 1 INTRODUCTION obile augmented reality (AR) for cultural heritage has been implemented for the past twelve years. It becomes an alternative for common existing traditional media (signs, interpretive board, and brochure) to explore cultural heritage site. However, most of existing mobile AR for cultural heritage sites do not cater the concept of enjoyable informal learning [1]. As learning has become a need for visitors during traveling, and visitors consider learning as a fun and enjoyable activity [2], it is necessary to embed enjoyable informal learning concept in cultural heritage sites. Enjoyable informal learning is the key for learning in cultural heritage sites. It helps visitor to gain the knowledge stored in it. During the process, learners do not feel they are learning, though they are achieving new knowledge at the same time [3]. This happens as learning material is easy to learn (audio, video, image, animation) that requires less effort to analyse that makes learning process occurs naturally [2]. Learners learn without any force or pressure. Previous studies reveal the potentials of mobile AR in cultural heritage learning, however, there is lack of study whether or not this mobile AR may provide enjoyable informal learning.This paper presents the development of AR@Melaka application. AR@Melaka is a mobile AR application to assist visitorsto experience enjoyable informal learning while exploring Melaka Heritage Sites. It is developed based on the conceptual model of Mobile AR for cultural heritage site towards enjoyable informal learning as proposed by [4]. AR@Melaka also has been evaluated in Melaka and it is discussed in the last section of this paper. This paper consists of six sections. Background of the study is provided in section two, and the AR@Melaka application development section is explained in section three. Methodology is explained in section four while the result and discussion are discussed in the fifth section. Lastly, the sixth section is the conclusion of this study is described. 2 AR PROJECTSFOR CULTURAL HERITAGE Mobile AR history started since AR was discovered in 1968. However, the first Mobile AR system was developed in 1997 by Steven Feiner. Then, it had improved from year to year as it reaches the leading stage in this millenium era. The first mobile AR for cultural heritage was developed in 2002, named as ARCHEOGUIDE. ARCHEOGUIDE reconstructs the Olympia Building in Greece into 3D simulation and create personalized AR tour guide that includes monument reconstruction, ancient life simulation, database tool for creating and archiving archaeological multimedia material [5]. Then, five years later, mobile AR project which used smart-phone as the platform was developed. Intelligent Tourism and Cultural Information through Ubiquitous Service) (iTACITUS) overlays multimedia content (3D model, text, image, sound, video) with superimposed environment, annotated landscape and spatial acoustic overlays technique implemented in Reggia Venaria Reale Italy and Winchester Hall, UK [6]. It ———————————————— • Ulka Candini Pendit is a PhD Student at the School of Multimedia Technology and Communication, Universiti Utara Malaysia, UUM Sintok, 06010 Kedah. E-mail: ulka.chandinipendit@gmail.com • Syamsul Bahrin Zaibon is with the the School of Multimedia Technology and Communication, Universiti Utara Malaysia, UUM Sintok, 06010 Kedah. E-mail: syamsulbahrin@uum.edu.my • Juliana Aida Abu Bakar is with the the School of Multimedia Technology and Communication, Universiti Utara Malaysia, UUM Sintok, 06010 Kedah. E-mail: liana@uum.edu.my M brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by UUM Repository