Historic streetscapes are increasingly popular as “visual spectacles” on social media, attracting young visitors who engage in superficial "check-in" style tourism while overlooking deeper layers of history and culture. This study adopts a human-centred design (HCD) approach to reframe digital engagement with heritage streets by developing an augmented reality (AR) mobile guide for Shamei Old Street in Kinmen, Taiwan. The project first combined expert interviews and on-site investigations to identify nine test sites across three categories: food, Instagrammable spots, and historic buildings. A cloud-based AR platform was then built, using mobile image recognition to trigger context-aware multimedia content such as short instructional clips, gamified tile-hunting tasks, and 3D animations that reconstruct vanished commercial scenes. A usability study with 13 student participants involved in situ AR exploration, followed by SUS and QUIS questionnaires and individual interviews. Results indicate high learnability and positive evaluations of multimodal interaction and immersive storytelling, while also revealing needs for richer cultural narratives, more consistent interface design, and integrated navigation support. Overall, the findings demonstrate the potential of AI-driven AR as a cultural translation medium that bridges visual spectacle and historical meaning, transforming static facades into dynamic narrative interfaces and enhancing visitors’ motivation, engagement, and satisfaction. Future work will further refine the Shamei AR guide and empirically examine the relationships between users’ perceived hedonic value, situational interest, and continuance usage intention, as well as the moderating role of their technology novelty-seeking tendency.

Authors:
Chu-Chun Huang, National Quemoy University, Taiwan
Ju-Han Chang, National Quemoy University, Taiwan

About the Presenter(s)
Ju-Han Chang is a graduate student in the Department of Tourism Management at National Quemoy University and has assisted with digital tourism projects in Kinmen.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Sunday Schedule

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