Connecting User Experience to Learning in an Evaluation of an Immersive, Interactive, Multimodal Augmented Reality Virtual Diorama in a Natural History Museum & the Importance of Story

Abstract

Reported are the findings of user experience and learning outcomes from a July 2019 study of an immersive, interactive, multimodal augmented reality (AR) application, used in the context of a museum. The AR Perpetual Garden App is unique in creating an immersive multisensory experience of data. It allowed scientifically naïve visitors to walk into a virtual diorama constructed as a data visualization of a springtime woodland understory and interact with multimodal information directly through their senses. The user interface comprised of two different AR data visualization scenarios reinforced with data based ambient bioacoustics, an audio story of the curator’s narrative, and interactive access to plant facts. While actual learning and dwell times were the same between the AR app and the control condition, the AR experience received higher ratings on perceived learning. The AR interface design features of “Story” and “Plant Info” showed significant correlations with actual learning outcomes, while “Ease of Use” and “3D Plants” showed significant correlations with perceived learning. As such, designers and developers of AR apps can generalize these findings to inform future designs.