Computer Vision and AI Tools for Enhancing User Experience in the Cultural Heritage Domain

To enhance the museum experience for visitors, it’s crucial to adopt a people-centered approach. This means engaging with visitors dynamically, providing transformative learning experiences from pre-arrival to post-departure. Using interactive and immersive experiences can evoke emotions, inspire creativity, and facilitate participatory learning. Incorporating advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (A.I.) and computer vision (C.V.) can deepen the connection between artworks and visitors, resulting in a “phygital museum.” This helps to reimagine museums with diverse spaces, tools, and interactions for various audiences. AI/CV tools help visitors interact with collections, inspiring insights and enriching data [15]. According to the “contextual mode” of learning proposed by Falk and Dierking [7], the more interactive and participatory the museum experience is, the more it will have a lasting impact on the visitor and thus improve his or her learning on the subject. Visitors are driven by their motivations, emotions, interests, and prior knowledge, and this background has a huge influence on the experience the visitor gets from the stay, including the memory they will have of it and recommendations to other users and friends. Emotions play a motivating role at every stage of the museum experience, from the decision to visit the museum to post-visit enjoyment, and visitors’ emotional engagement is a prerequisite for effective and authentic learning. Digital tools can enhance the museum experience by triggering a multisensory experience, enabling physical connections, personalizing the visit to the user’s needs, enhancing playful and social interaction, and sharing personal experiences. In this paper we report on the design and functionalities of a set of CV and AI tools designed to enhance the user experience in cultural heritage institutions like museums. The tools are open source.