Archeovirtual 2011: An evaluation approach to virtual museums

November 2011 saw the opening of the exhibition "Archeovirtual" organized by CNR ITABC - Virtual Heritage Lab - and V-MusT Network of Excellence, in Paestum, Italy, under the general direction of BMTA1. The event, that was part of a wider European project focus on virtual museums, turned to be a great opportunity to show many different projects, applications and installations about Virtual Reality and Cultural Heritage. The four-days exhibition was an occasion to get in touch with the newest experiences with virtual reconstructions, 3D models, interactive environments, augmented reality and mobile solutions for cultural contents; at the same time, it was an opportunity for organizers to directly face the audience's impact towards projects. That because of the necessity to investigate more on social and behavioral aspects in order to positively affect the learning benefits of public. So doing, we could build in the future applications much more tailored on the final costumers, closer to their abilities and necessities. During the show four types of investigative tools were employed to evaluate the general visitor's behavior and the effectiveness of interfaces, to understand their expectations and experiences, and to obtain a reference grid of values to test if users' experience fit with organizers' ones. The first outcomes revealed that audience's impact toward interactive applications seems depending on the capability of technology to be "invisible" otherwise technology has to assure a wide range of possibilities in content accesses. In definitive, virtual museums need to have an always more integrated approach between cultural contents, interfaces and social and behavioral studies. © 2012 IEEE.