# Augmented Reality in Cultural Heritage: An Overview of the Last Decade of Applications
## 3 Top Trending Applications of AR in Cultural Heritage
### User Experience  
An evaluation of AR technology potential from the point of view of stakeholder interests is performed in [84]. Stakeholders are regarded as either internal, such as a museum's staff members, or external, such as the visitors of the museum or community representatives. The authors explore the implications of using AR on various dimensions, such as economic impact, social effects, or educational impact, in a user-based qualitative study performed in a small museum in the UK. The user study gathered stakeholders' impressions on items pertaining to each of the dimensions where AR value was being assessed (economic, experiential, social, epistemic, historical and cultural, educational). Cultural heritage was proven to benefit greatly from adopting AR, from the perspective of both internal and external stakeholders. The willingness of users to adopt AR-specific gadgets, such as AR smart glasses, and the potential behind such devices from the user perspective are studied in [85, 86]. The study [85] used a sample of 28 visitors to a small UK-based art gallery, and it focused on identifying the driving factors that influence user preferences for smart glasses in a cultural setting. While innovativeness was perceived as a plus, the interaction was difficult for  
Figure 8: Visualization and interaction with entire 3D scene (**a**) and a virtual artifact (**b**). Courtesy of [PERSON] et al. [83]. some users, even though they assimilated the smart glasses to regular glasses that they would wear. The perceived enjoyment was positive, as was the perceived usefulness. In [86], smart glasses were used in an outdoor setting, enhancing with both audio and visual aids the exhibits at the Hecht Museum in Israel. In the experimental study, a tour guide implemented as a mobile application is compared to the AR smart glasses guide solution, with respect to usability and user acceptance, following a thorough statistical methodology. While the novelty of using smart glasses was the main attraction, the study also revealed some problems relating to the specific outdoor environment, such as lighting, that need to be addressed in the future. Guidelines for the design of applications using wearables and in particular smart glasses are derived from an experiment at the MIT Museum in [87]. Observational data were gathered from 12 participants recruited among MIT students, freely interacting with a Glassware prototype in the Robotics Gallery, followed by a qualitative study that extracted emerging trends from text, transcribed from audio interviews. The influence mixed reality exerts on the museum experience is modeled in [88]. The museum context is provided by the exhibition \"the Ara as it was\" from the Ara Pacis Museum. In the research design, the visitor experience is assessed on seven dimensions (museum information, customization, format, usability, information saving, interaction, experience) with 23 individual variables. The relatively large and diverse user sample (586 local and international visitors) provides value to the conclusions of the study, that users are moderately to highly satisfied with mixed reality integration in the museum. However, the study was only performed in one museum, and it leaves to future work questions regarding the influence that various factors, such as cultural background or previous mixed reality experiences, have on the overall mixed reality experience. Tourism benefits from cultural heritage AR applications have been explored to enhance the attractiveness of local cultural tourism sites (see Figure 9). User experience with using mobile AR applications in the cultural heritage tourism context is modeled with [PERSON]'s theoretical model in [89], and it is empirically confirmed in a particular implementation for urban tourism in Dublin, Ireland. The user sample was limited, and the qualitative study was not followed by a quantitative study to test its generalization power.