Do you remember that building? Exploring old Zakynthos through an augmented reality mobile game Dimitrios Chalvatzaras 1 , Nikoleta Yiannoutsou 2 , Christos Sintoris 2 ,Nikolaos Avouris 2 1 SoFar, Zakynthos, Greece. email: info@sofar.gr 2 HCI Group, University of Patras, Patras, Greece, email: {sintoris, nyiannoutsou, avouris }@upatras.gr 1 Proceedings, 8th International Conference on Interactive Mobile Communication Technologies and Learning, IMCL2014, Thessaloniki, November 2014. Abstract—This paper presents a mobile augmented reality application, that was designed with the objective of visitors, to experience the historical center of old Zakynthos, Greece, that was destroyed after an earthquake, and allow the users to re-live the atmosphere and life of the historic place. Special attention is given to the mental model of the landmarks developed by the users after interacting with the application, discussing some of the observed flaws of this model. Keywords—augmented realtity, location-based mobile game, cultural heritage I. INTRODUCTION In 1953 a devastating earthquake destroyed most buildings in the islands of Zakynthos and Kefallinia, in western Greece. The capital of Zakynthos used to be a charming town of Venetian architecture which was completely flattened after the earthquake. When the town was rebuilt later on, despite the fact that some effort was put in maintaining its old character, most of the old scenery, including the unique architecture of the old mansions, the beautiful churches and the narrow streets was lost forever. However, modern augmented reality technology can help the visitors of the place to re-live this old Zakynthos town atmosphere and learn about the social and economic life of its people through a playful activity. This was the objective of a collaborative project of the SoFar group and the University of Patras. The prototype that was built out of this collaboration is presented here and discussed, with particular focus on the mental model of the old town developed by the users after their interaction with the prototype. In particular, in the evaluation study presented here, users were asked to recall specific buildings and landmarks after game activity. The findings of the study can support development of similar applications that aim to enhance the experience of the visitor in places of historical significance. II. MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY APPLICATIONS FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE In recent years we witnessed improvements in mobile devices in terms of built-in sensors, computational resources and power of connected information. This new technology has made Augmented Reality possible on mobile devices. We are able to blend information from our senses and mobile devices 1 Proceedings, 8th International Conference on Interactive Mobile Communication Technologies and Learning, IMCL2014, Thessaloniki, November 2014. in many novel ways, despite the many limitations that still exist [1]. Mobile Augmented Reality is the overlay of real-time, real- world environments with digital information designed to enhance a person’s perception of that view, facilitated by mobile media devices. In addition, during the last years, mobile devices (smartphones/tablets) include powerful Graphical Processing Units, that make possible the implementation of 3D virtual world/game applications. There have been various similar attempts, during the last years. Archeoguide [2] is a typical early example that used a wearable computer to guide the user through ancient Olympia, in Greece. On the other hand, iTACITUS [3] reality filtering enabled context sensitive overlays of original historic drawings of missing paintings or lost architecture. The Mobile Augmented Reality Tour (MART) system [4] also demonstrates a mobile outdoor augmented reality system tested in Gyeongbokgung in Korea. Using this system, 3D characters were superimposed in the environment. TimeWarp [5] was a mobile outdoor mixed reality game for exploring the history of a city in the spatial and the temporal dimension in the city of Cologne, Germany. ExCORA [6] is also an augmented reality pervasive game that aims to engage general public with the Urgull Mountain in San Sebastian, Spain in order to educate visitors on its hidden history. In the case of the MARA framework [7], image recognition was used for identifying the context of the augmented reality application in an archeological site in Italy. Other recent examples of such applications for cultural heritage sites is the game developed for the Acropolis Museum in the frame of the CHESS project [8] and UAR (Urban Augmented Reality) [9] that is an application that has been developed by the Netherlands Architecture Institute, to provide information about the build environment of the past, in various Dutch cities through texts, images, archives, by means of advanced 3D models. Finally CultureClic [10] is a mobile cultural application to discover geo-located works of arts in high definition, to access to French museums information, and to discover cultural events, through augmented reality. III. THE VIRTUALZAKYNTHOS PROJECT The VirtualZakynthos prototype is a case study of a project (VirtuallityCity) that experiments on the application of a virtual world as an overlay on top of a real world. In the