ISEE: Information access through the navigation of a 3D interactive environment

Managing heterogeneous information related to Cultural Heritage sites and artifacts is still a complex task. In latest years, there has been a significant trend towards the massive digitization of this data, as this allows more efficient and reliable storage and management processes. Furthermore, the relationship between conservation managers, who are often unfamiliar with current documentation techniques, and information providers, who tend to be highly technical practitioners without expertise in cultural heritage, is not easy to handle. Moreover, in Cultural Heritage objects often have a strong 3D component, and cannot be easily represented with conventional data management frameworks like Geographic Information System (GIS). The use of a 3D framework may allow a closer adherence to the real world, as it respects the spatial relationships among various parts. A novel method to access spatial information through the interactive navigation of a synthetic 3D model, reproducing the main features of a corresponding real environment, is proposed in this paper. The result of this work is a system called ISEE. An innovative aspect of the ISEE approach is represented by our definition of spatial relevance of information. The information is ranked with a novel measure of relevance that depends on the position/orientation in the 3D space, and allows for an intuitive interface. The basic idea of ISEE is to allow retrieving information by just looking around in a 3D environment, as moving and looking at the world is the main modality we use to gather information from it. Users explore in intuitive way a 3D environment and access the related information, kept in its spatial context. Information are accessed through "extended zones", i.e. portions of the 3D environment not having direct reference to specific elements, rather to the distribution of information and to the current user location. The use of extended zones gives to the proposed ranking algorithm a superior performance than rankings methods based on distance. Indeed the ISEE ranking matches the intuitive expectation of the users, as was verified with a formal usability test. The system has been applied to case studies related both to outdoor and indoor environments, showing its potential also as a smart guide with the use of augmented reality technologies. In order to enable access to a larger audience, sample applications using this method are based on Web technologies and do not require special training to be used. At the end of the paper are presented the results of an evaluation test, which provided useful suggestion to improve the system usability and performances.