Effects of minimum content in cultural informatics

Abstract

Over the last years our research group has been working with a novel concept for HCI in Cultural Informatics, that of minimum content. Responding to the cognitive overload and the museum fatigue that is well documented in the literature, the concept of minimum meaningful content was introduced and studied, with regards to the user experience, concerning possible learning benefits and overall satisfaction. The present work presents findings from different past efforts that explored the effects of minimum content on cultural heritage visitors. Minimum content was tested with visitors of different sites and lab experiment participants, focusing on augmented reality, games, and photography. The results reveal the potential of minimum content in cultural visits. The implications for HCI and future works are also discussed.