This paper proposes a new framework for the production and development of immersive and playful technologies in cultural heritage in which different stakeholders such as users and local communities are involved early on in the product development chain. We believe that an early stage of co-creation in the design process produces a clear understanding of what users struggle with, facilitates the creation of community ownership and helps in better defining the design challenge at hand. We show that adopting such a framework has several direct and indirect benefits, including a deeper sense of site and product ownership as direct benefits to the individual, and the creation and growth of tangential economies to the community.
MULTIFILE
Heritage communication is more and more integrating digital media, which help to offer a wider and deeper understanding of heritage and its values. In particular, intangible cultural heritage (ICH) can find in information and communication technologies a powerful ally to share its facets and different dimensions, through multimedia technologies (especially videos), storytelling, and several other applications like mixed realities and artificial intelligence. Such media can help not only to provide access to information and knowledge, but also to enrich the experience of people exposed to such heritage, and to promote a deep connection between the heritage itself and interested persons. This paper presents the process through which goals and needs to communicate and promote Indonesian Batik textile heritage, which has been inscribed by UNESCO among the Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009, have been collected and transformed into the design of digital communication outlets, namely a website and a mobile app. Such process has encompassed an extensive analysis of the presence itself of Batik in digital media through benchmarking, as well as the elicitation of needs and requirements of relevant stakeholders and target audiences, through in-depth interviews and surveys. The design has been done ensuring at every step that it was considering and integrating, as much as possible, the results of the previous analyses. While presenting the iWareBatik case, which has been successfully implemented and launched, with the support of the highest Indonesian cultural-related institutions, the paper describes in detail the used methodology, hence providing an itinerary, which can be adopted by other similar projects.
LINK
The Internet’s dominant role in recent years has caused a change in the relationship between media producers, suppliers and consumers in the traditional media landscape. The cultural sector must therefore decide what to do with today’s digital media in response to the general public’s changing role, and for the purpose of improving accessibility. The use of multiple media resources and particularly resources like the Internet and mobile telephony seems to be inevitable. The only question that remains is: how? This paper addresses this question by focussing on social tagging and storytelling, and reports the results of an empirical study on tagging behaviour using the social tagging platform (see also Van Vliet et al., 2010).
