*3.3. Research Method*

For the purpose of this study, several locations were selected to perform the experiment. The reason for choosing these specific places was that we wanted to present the application in cities where there was a greater possibility that tourists or residents have heard of the poet Ovid. As mentioned above, the three locations were the following:


Not only was the location different, but also the content of the application was slightly different. For instance, in Constanta the virtual building was placed on top of the ruins of a real ancient Roman house. By doing so, users had a more realistic experience when navigating inside and outside the house (Figure 5a). This version of Ovid was reciting a short part of the poem "Sorrows", in which he expresses his complaints and fears regarding the place where he was exiled. The animated virtual model of Ovid writing at a table was located in the last room of the house, and is presented in Figure 5b.

In Rome, the application was similar, except that Ovid could be seen in Roman clothes, walking through the square (Figure 5c) while reciting a small part of his work The Metamorphoses, Book I—Fable 1. The Roman poet spent his childhood in Sulmona; as such, we decided to use a child version of Ovid. In this scenario, Ovid was walking outside the house, while in the background users could hear a poem recited by a child in an old Italian dialect (Figure 5d).

Therefore, there were three different applications, with different scenarios and audio content heard in the background. Each application build in Unity contained a scene with one or two characters and some objects, as follows:


A survey was performed following the same procedure in all locations. Participants that agreed to take part in the experiment received a verbal introduction about the purpose of the experiment and a short tutorial regarding the usage of the AR application. They received the Lenovo phablet with the OvidAR application, after which they were allowed to explore the 3D scene as much as they wanted (each participant used the app between 4 and 12 min). After the experiment, participants completed a questionnaire in order to provide feedback on the experience they had using the application.

From the previous literature regarding the evaluation of MAR applications, we adopted four measurement items: perceived comprehensibility, perceived manipulability [59], perceived enjoyment, and perceived usefulness [65].

**Figure 5.** Photos taken during the experiments—screenshots taken in different places: (**a**) user looking from the inside of the house, in Rome; (**b**) user looking at Ovid writing at his table, in Constanta; (**c**) user exploring the outside of the house, in Rome; (**d**) user exploring the outside of Ovid's home from childhood, in Piazza XX Settembre, Sulmona.

#### *3.4. Participants*

Participants included citizens and tourists that showed interest in trying a mobile AR application. A total of 63 subjects, 37 males and 26 females, aged between 17 and 62 (mean = 33.8, SD = 11.1) got the opportunity to try the application. Approximately 1/3 of the respondents were between 20 and 29 years old (34.9%), and another 1/3 were between 30 and 39 years old (33.3%). Participants were asked to rate their usage of mobile devices on a Likert-type scale (from 1 = "never use a mobile device" to 7 = "daily use of mobile devices") and if they have ever previously used an AR application. Each of them used a smartphone or tablet almost every day (mean = 5.9, SD = 1.1) and about half of them (32) had never used or seen an AR application.

Figure 6 summarizes the demographic characteristics of the respondents. Individual characteristics for each of the places where the application was tested are briefly presented in Table 1.

**Figure 6.** Showing individual variables of all the participants.

Participants that were not familiar with AR applications received a brief introduction of how AR works and how to use the OvidAR application. This was necessary to allow participants to familiarize themselves with the application so that they could evaluate the AR more accurately, even if they had never heard or seen such an application. Then, visitors were asked to use the application for approximately 5 min or more, and to then participate in the survey. The users who had never used AR applications were advised to evaluate OvidAR as objectively as possible, referring strictly to the application and to its content.

The first research stage involved mostly Romanian tourists with very little AR experience, but the application was also tested and evaluated by people who had previous AR knowledge, such as the attendees of the 6th Edition of creatiVE Summer School in Virtual Environments, organized at Ovidius University of Constanta. Participants from Rome were mostly foreign tourists from Germany, USA, Canada, or Romania, but also from Italy. In Sulmona, all participants were local, Italian inhabitants of the area.


**Table 1.** Individual characteristics of participants for each location.
