# Interactive Exploration of Virtual Heritage by Means of Natural Gestures
## 5 Discussion and Limitations  
Museum artifacts and cultural objects are usually subject to restrictions with respect to their handling, partly due to preservation reasons, their uniqueness, and also to their frailty or inaccessibility. The systems presented in this paper use Virtual Reality replicas of museum artifacts and allow users to interact with the 3D reconstructed objects using natural hand gestures. Figure 21: Summary of answers to item “_1 find the application easy to use_”, grouped by Education level. The answers ranged from 1—_”Strongly disagree_” to 5—_“Strongly agree_” with the statement. Figure 20: Graphical representation for the assessment of the utility of the application, as perceived by the participants of the study. We were concerned about the potential skepticism with which users might approach the application. As it results from the analysis above, the vast majority of users enjoyed using the application, finding it easy to be used. This result answers the first research question (**RQ1**) that we addressed in the study. With respect to **RQ2**, from analyzing the responses to the questionnaire presented in the previous section, we conclude that the implementation of our systems in the museum enhances the attractiveness of the museum (Figure 19). The median score for the suitability of the system as a tool for the development of historical knowledge is 5, and the mode is also 5, thus expressing high satisfaction with respect to the historical education of audience, while the median agreement score with the item \"The application allowed me to create a mental image of the visualized objects\" was also 5, with a mode of 5, signifying an overwhelming strong agreement from the part of the users. The answers are consistent. The same median and mode values of 5 support the strong agreement with the item \"The application is useful for promoting cultural heritage\". We extract from the user answers the conclusion that they are satisfied with the experience of using the system, in response to **RQ3**. Overall, almost 90% of the visitors strongly agreed to a rising interest towards using VR/AR systems in the future, thus answering **RQ4**. To conclude, the research questions that we inquired were answered in a positive manner by the museum visitors that agreed to fill in questionnaires on the occasion of their visit to the museum. The majority of the museum visitors that filled in questionnaires were more than 15 years old (90%), with 80% of visitors being adults, approximately 10% of users being over 50 years old. All the users in the \"over 65 years\" and in the \"11-15 years\" categories provided positive answers with respect to their personal satisfaction with using the app (Figures 22 and 23). The small sample of users in these age ranges is, however, a limitation of our study. In a future study, it would be interesting to assess the acceptance of our system in a larger sample of young users (<15 years old), and likewise, in a larger sample of older users (>65 years old). Figure 22: Summary of answers for the item _“1 find the application easy to use”_, structured by age group. The answers ranged from 1—_“Strongly disagree”_ to 5—_“Strongly agree”_ with the statement. From the point of view of the physical effort required to use the system, the opinions of the users were divided. The mean score of the responses to the item \"I consider that the interaction with the system does not require too much physical effort\" was 3.05, with the standard deviation of 1.91 (44.5% of users strongly agreed, and 44.5% of users strongly disagreed with the statement). Hence, even if the intellectual effort of using the system was deemed low, the physical effort may raise a concern. The user answers to the open items revealed that some users considered that they should have devoted more time to the visit to the museum or that the location is too cold; one user was not pleased with the placement of the system in a too small place, and another user considered the exposed artifact to have \"_low brightness_\".