# Virtual Humans in Museums and Cultural Heritage Sites
## 4 Discussion

Table 2: \(Cont.\)This comes in contradistinction to the important effect that digital human guides or other avatars have on users' perceptions of exhibitions and CH sites. Finally, [PERSON] et al. [41], who did investigate the engaging potential of interacting (in fact, directing) one's own avatar in a VM environment, did so in an experiment on users who have some form of autism. They did find a positive correlation between engagement with exhibits and users' projection of themselves onto an avatar that views artwork, but this is evidently case-specific research that does not produce a safe conclusion about the balance between user avatars and virtual agents as factors that foster a VM experience. Moreover, in a similar vein, the authors of [46] investigate the potential of directing a VR-based user avatar through the novel technological possibility of the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) in a controlled environment. In the fourth case of research on user avatars [9] in the last five years, the user avatar appears and functions as a digital agent appearing on a large screen, facing the user and other visitors, and interacting with informational content. In this instance, within an onsite installation, in an actual museum setting, visitors' own avatars can be visualised in different ways: skeletal, robot-like, as well as realistically through an augmented virtuality application that projected their image through video in real-time. In effect, users were extrapolated onto a large screen, in essence, watching themselves on screen, unpacking knowledge by interacting with the exhibits. This resembles watching a digital human providing access to the information upon users' demand, as it transposes the user as an entity that literally stands opposite to them. Another element this example brings to the fore is the frequently observed cases of mixed approaches in which users may choose between different visualizations or modes. This trend is also seen in cultural institutions that employ both VR and MR applications for the same cultural content (e.g., [PERSON] et al., 2020 [12]) as well as diversified modalities users can choose from within the same setting. There is a significant turn toward examining the potential of digital humans to communicate with and engage the viewer, as the following instances illustrate. The fact that one's own virtual appearance or behavioural features have far less significance in affecting meaning-making and learning in museums and CH sites [40], in comparison to the respective characteristics of digital guides, comes as no surprise. This is not drastically different from a real-world situation in a museum or gallery, in which the attitude, perceived professionalism, mode of address and looks of the person mediating the exhibition are far more important to us than our appearance and the behavioural modalities that we employ. Therefore, pertinent research puts emphasis on the qualitative characteristics of virtual agents that attempt to engage the viewer. At this point, two examples are offered  
Figure 9: (**a**) Visualization of mutual gaze (eye contact amongst users) with floating, coloured shapes (pink bubbles); (**b**) Visualization of points of interest that attract users’ gaze and (**c**) Combination of the above from ([PERSON] at al., 2018 [40]). to draw attention to the cutting-edge technology incorporated into such digital agents, as well as the emphasis put on the behavioural realism they feature as they engage in life-like conversations with people. As explained in [6] in 2005, [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] [49] introduced an embodied conversational agent, [PERSON], as a museum guide in a real-world setting, in a computer museum in Paderborn, Germany. [PERSON] was the size of a real human and appeared on a screen, face-to-face with museum visitors. Their research addressed issues on how conversational behaviour is achieved and evaluated users' acceptance and engagement. In a similar vein, [PERSON] et al.