# Virtual Reality in Museums: Exploring the Experiences of Museum Professionals
## 5 Perceived Advantages and Challenges of Using VR Technologies
### Perceived Challenges and Limitations  
Apart from VR advantages, our aim was to also explore the challenges and limitations that museum professionals faced with VR technologies in their museum spaces, as these were perceived by the interviewees. Overall, 9 categories of challenges and limitations were identified based on the participants' replies, relating to the lack of social interaction, staffing and training needs, cost, accessibility, practical and technical issues, graphics quality, exhibition flow, distraction, and technology acceptance (see Figure 2). One of the most strongly emphasized limitations relates to the social aspect of the museum visit (mentioned by 11 interviewees). Since most VR is designed for a single user, participants consider VR as \"too isolating\", cutting the visitor off the rest of the environment and not allowing any social interaction. Since most people visit a museum as part of a pair or a group, social interaction is an essential component of every museum visit which is hindered by VR headsets, creating an \"antisocial experience\" (Interviewee 8). Although immersion was also highlighted as an advantage of VR, this same feature is also considered a limitation if seen from a different standpoint. This is especially so for museums focusing on families and groups, which feel that VR cannot help them to fulfil their mission. This social isolation was one of the reasons why some museums did not repeat a VR project or do not have plans to design a new one. Interviewee 14 argues: \"We are an institution that's very  
Figure 2: Reported challenges/limitations of VR as perceived by the interviewees. focused on family learning and family members being able to have a shared experience. That's a bit of a challenge with VR where it's a much more individual experience\". In an attempt to overcome this, some museums tried to apply alternative ways of using VR to make it more social. However, all such attempts created new issues. For example, interviewee 5 reflects on other problems that arose when trying to provide a more social VR experience: \"When we tried to use more than 50 headsets in the gallery there was a lot of interference and issues with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi--they took a lot of time to set up\". Interviewee 12 also mentioned that \"mass use is hard on the hardware and then there are the other issues like hygiene\". The second most emphasized challenge relates to staffing and training needs. In many cases visitors are not familiar enough with VR and usually need assistance, meaning that \"extra staff should be hired just to manage the VR stations\" (Interviewee 8). Thus, the extra staffing needs and the added responsibilities (mentioned by 11 interviewees) pose operational challenges for museums both from a financial and an organizational point of view, since new operational procedures had to be developed (Interviewee 14). Even if new people are hired, with an additional operational cost, they must also be trained since for many museums their staff is part of the offered experience, which is something often neglected by VR developers who focus only on what happens when the headset is on. Interviewee 16 warns:  
_\"The thing we must never forget is the [visitor's] experience around the technology. It's not just what happens when they put the headset on, it's who did they speak to in order to be able to do this? Was that person able to make them feel comfortable? Is the equipment clean? Is everything working when they press the button? It's all the attention to detail of the experience for the person who's coming into it before they even put the headset on. And then also, what happened when they took the headset off? Was there somebody there to greet them, to point them which way to go now? That's what makes the experience great.