Adaptive Exhibition Topologies for Personalized Virtual Museums

The paper addresses the issue of virtual museums' space personalization. Personalization techniques are poorly integrated in virtual museums implementations and when applied little attention is given in the abilities, requirements and needs of their visitors. In this paper, the concept of adaptive exhibition topologies is introduced. Adaptive exhibition topologies are patterns of space structure that are specifically designed in order to provide unlimited exhibition space for personalized exhibitions based on users' interests and visiting preferences. Adaptive exhibition topologies focus on the time that visitors are willing to spend for their visit. In contrast to conventional implementations, adaptive exhibition topologies instances are created according to their visitors' interests and their available time while taking into consideration certain curatorial guidelines. A number of topologies is introduced as well as appropriate metrics for their study and comparison reasons. The effect of different exhibition topologies on users' navigation and interaction with the exhibits is studied through the conducted usability and evaluation tests.