M. Ioannides (Ed.): EuroMed 2010, LNCS 6436, pp. 250–261, 2010. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010 Comparative Study of Interactive Systems in a Museum Despina Michael 1 , Nectarios Pelekanos 2 , Isabelle Chrysanthou 2 , Panagiotis Zaharias 3 , Loukia L. Hadjigavriel 4 , and Yiorgos Chrysanthou 3 1 University of Nicosia, Cyprus michael.d@unic.ac.cy 2 A.R.M.E.S. Ltd, Nicosia, Cyprus {nectarios.pelekanos,isabelle.chrysanthou}@armes-tech.com 3 University of Cyprus, Cyprus {zaharias,yiorgos}@cs.ucy.ac.cy 4 The Leventis Municipal Museum, Cyprus Loukia.Loizou@nicosiamunicipality.org.cy Abstract. Museums research new ways to offer positive experience to the visi- tors and encourage them to return, using modern communication and learning tools. To the effect, technologically advanced interactive ICT systems, are placed in modern-day museums. In this paper we describe and compare six different types of museum exhibits, one traditional and five interactive ICT ex- hibits. The five interactive ICT systems offer different types and level of digital information, different interaction constraints and different types of activities. The exhibits, which are located in the Leventis Municipal Museum in Nicosia, are the following: a traditional map learning activity, a virtual tour projection, a multi-touch table application and three different augmented reality applications. We evaluated the experience of young users with the exhibits and conclude that the experience scores top marks for the interactive ICT systems. Keywords: Interaction, Museum, Comparative Study, Video Projection, Multi-touch Table, Augmented Reality. 1 Introduction Traditionally, museums conveyed information to their visitors through the exhibit of real objects. During the last couple of decades, the new trend is toward active in- volvement through the installation technologically advanced interactive ICT systems. The systems are installed within the physical space of a museum as a communication and learning tool and as an additional material next to the original objects. Those interactive ICT exhibits includes applications like VR systems (Roussou, 2001), Augmented Reality systems (Wojciechowski, 2004), haptics displays (Loscos, 2004), multi-touch tables (Averkiou, 2009; Geller, 2006), etc. Generally they allow reality-based interactivity of the user with a virtual 3D representation of objects within virtual or real worlds. In this paper we present a comparative study between five different types of inter- active user interface exhibits (VR tour, touch table, three augmented reality exhibits)