Cultural Heritage: the Palazzo Grassi Experience

Internet has brought to cultural institutions the chance to use new communication paradigms. In particular the introduction of 3D technology for the network promises to be a powerful means for the diffusion of scientific and humanistic culture, especially for novices that can find in the 3D metaphor a more intuitive paradigm to access cultural information. This work analyzes thc current points of weakness of navigation in 3D worlds and proposes new guidelines to improve the quality of interaction for cultural heritage applications. A particular reference is made to naives end users which may be experts in their special application domain but are generalIy not capable of orientating, navigating and exploring within virtual information and knowledge environments, due to the lack of support provided for these activities by nowadays information systems and their 3D-visual front end architectures and tools. The paper proposes a number of guidelines to overcome the current limits in 3D interaction and to help authors to build more effective 3D simulations. These guidelines have been applied to a number of implementations made for the Palazzo Grassi web site (Palazzo Grassi is the world wide known institution that promotes cultural exhibitions and events in Venice); these realizations have been precious for rcceiving feedback from users and for refining the proposals, according to the principle of iterative design.