Co-designing Cultural Heritage Experiences for All with Virtual Reality: a Scenario-Based Design approach

The use of digital technologies for enhancing the accessibility of cultural heritage sites is an emerging field of research with relevant design challenges. Research in this field highlights the potential of virtual reality (VR) to guarantee access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage to visitors with disabilities. This paper aims to advance knowledge on the design of visitor-centric VR solutions for enhancing cultural heritage accessibility, presenting the process, tools and findings of a user experience design research for the development of a compensatory VR solution for visitors with mobility impairments. For this research, the Scenario-Based Design method (SBD) is applied within a User-Centered Design approach to identify user requirements of the VR solution. Based on this method, different personas and corresponding scenarios are designed to represent the needs, motivations and behaviors of the main user groups of the digital solution. Further, the SBD is used in the prototyping phase as a tool for the co-design activity, which involved users, designers and other stakeholders to identify the experiential and functional requirements for the VR solution. The paper presents the findings of the co-design process and discusses the implications of the use of SBD for developing digital solutions for cultural heritage accessibility.