Empowering Museum Experiences Applying Gamification Techniques Based on Linked Data and Smart Objects

Abstract

Museums play a crucial role in preserving cultural heritage. However, the forms in which they display cultural heritage might not be the most effective at piquing visitors’ interest. Therefore, museums tend to integrate different technologies that aim to create engaging and memorable experiences. In this context, the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technology results particularly promising due to the possibility of implementing smart objects in museums, granting exhibits advanced interaction capabilities. Gamification techniques are also a powerful technique to draw visitors’ attention. These often rely on interactive question-based games. A drawback of such games is that questions must be periodically regenerated, and this is a time-consuming task. To confront these challenges, this paper proposes a low-maintenance gamified smart object platform that automates the creation of questions by exploiting semantic web technologies. The platform has been implemented in a real-life scenario. The results obtained encourage the use of the platform in the museum considered. Therefore, it appears to be a promising work that could be extrapolated and adapted to other kinds of museums or cultural heritage institutions.