Abstract

Emergent digital technologies provide cultural heritage spaces with the opportunity to reassess their current user journey. An immersive user experience can be developed that is innovative, dynamic, and customised for each attendee. Museums have already begun to move towards interactive exhibitions utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IOT), and more recently, the use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) has become more common in cultural heritage spaces to present items of historical significance. VR concentrates on the provision of full immersion within a digitised environment utilising a headset, whilst AR focuses on the inclusion of digitised content within the existing physical environment that can be accessed through a medium such as a mobile phone application. Machine learning techniques such as a recommender system can support an immersive user journey by issuing personalised recommendations regarding a user’s preferred future content based on their previous activity. An ethical approach is necessary to take the precautions required to protect the welfare of human participants and eliminate any aspect of stereotyping or biased behaviour. This paper sets out a human-centred manifesto intended to provide guidance when inducing smart digital immersion in cultural heritage spaces. A review of existing digital cultural heritage projects was conducted to determine their adherence to the manifesto with the findings indicating that Education was a primary focus across all projects and that Personalisation, Respect and Empathy, and Support were also highly valued. Additionally, the findings indicated that there were areas with room for improvement such as Fairness to ensure that a well-balanced human-centred system is implemented.