# Virtual Reality in Museums: Exploring the Experiences of Museum Professionals
## 6 Future Directions: What Does the Future Hold for VR in Museums?
### Envisioning the Future of Emerging Technologies in Museums  
This section asks: What does the future hold for VR and other emerging technologies in museums and how do museum professionals envision the future? Most participants agree that there will be an increased necessity for museums to adapt and incorporate new technologies, since especially the new generation of visitors will seek digital experiences and expect museums to be \"digitally literate\" (Interviewee 16). This poses challenges, as already explained, on an organizational and strategic level and requires an investment in partnerships and capacity building to develop the necessary expertise amongst museum professionals, in a \"process of creative learning at a sector level\" (Interviewee 16). For this to be achieved, museums will need to have a clear vision for the incorporation of emerging technologies and invest on both sound strategies and evaluation procedures, and on the appropriate technological infrastructure and personnel training. As evident through the conducted interviews, the digital literacy of museum professionals is also a problem that needs to be addressed, but which proves problematic due to the lack of necessary funds for the required training [44; 45]. Given the challenge of securing the necessary funds for such developments, many participants stress the need for the formation of strong partnerships, to allow them to experiment and overcome the funding difficulties. Some participants have already used VR in new creative ways and have achieved high levels of engagement and innovative partnerships, highlighting a new avenue for the future on VR uses. For example, in the case of museum 6, the museum organizes VR workshops and talks, including workshops for developers interested in VR, so that developers can come together and show their work on museum related activities. In the case of museum 7, the museum organized VR festivals dedicated to VR, which included \"experts in the development of VR software and psychologists to explain how the brain works when we're experiencing VR\" (Interviewee 7). Such festivals, together with special weekends offering VR itineraries linked to the museum's themes, were used by the museum to create new ways of engagement with its audience. In another example, a museum organizes 3-day events in which external researchers act as \"visiting educators\" engaging visitors around various topics using VR to convey their research (Interviewee 12). The same museum issued \"an open invitation to the VR community to reach out when they need user testing\" (Interviewee 12). In this way the museum builds bridges with developing companies, also diversifying what is on offer to its visitors. The particular museum also developed a new model for creating partnerships, by having in residence start-ups dealing with VR and which can test their products and receive feedback by the visitors. These examples of other types of partnerships that can be achieved, illustrate a possible way forward not only for adopting VR in new creative ways but also for creating fruitful partnerships and overcoming budget constraints. Furthermore, a few participants expect that in the future many current challenges in terms of cost and equipment will be solved, since museums will rely more on the personal devices of their visitors, which will become even more sophisticated in the future, and thus museums will only invest on software development. Indeed, the role of the visitors' personal devices has been also stressed by some scholars as an easier and cost-effective option [37; 46]. However, some others appear skeptical about the consequences this may have for the quality of the experience. For example, Interviewee 16 mentions: \"You don't get the full immersive world in AR/VR through a phone. You lose something there, but you gain a much bigger market, much bigger potential audience, and also the costs go down. It's a win-lose situation\". Constant updating was also identified as a characteristic of the future of new technologies in museums.