Towards User Experience Guidelines for Mobile Augmented Reality Storytelling with Historical Images in Urban Cultural Heritage

Augmented reality is a novel and engaging way for visitors to experience cultural heritage as locals or tourists. Mobile augmented reality applications with historical images showing landmarks or events of the past are a popular category. Using research methods such as literature review, competitive analysis, semi-structured interviews, and usability evaluations, we derived a set of practical user experience guidelines for designing mobile augmented reality storytelling applications with historical images in the context of urban cultural heritage. To demonstrate how these guidelines could be applied, we present a redesigned prototype for such an application, developed for Timisoara (Romania), European Capital of Culture in 2023.