multi-sensory mobile acceptance

​Mobile Five Senses Augmented Reality System: Technology Acceptance Study

As part of their bid to integrate a multi-sensory device with museum visitor mobiles researchers created a  theoretical model of new technology acceptance, tested with an app that they developed which detects museum objects using the camera phone, linked to a small Bluetooth extra-sensory (smells, temperature, vibration) access device that museum visitors can take around with them. 

Extended sense contents were created for the museum’s most important objects (masterpieces), i.e., text, audio, video, touch (cold, heat, vibration), smell, and taste.    

The app has 4 main features:
(i)the detection and recognition of museum objects
(ii)the detection, recognition, and tracking of objects as the user moves along the museum, allowing to touch, different areas of the objects displayed in the mobile screen and showing information about that region, as well as relevant smells.
(iii) the detection and modelling of the museum's walls, and subsequent projection of information/contents (e.g., images, movies, or text), related with the objects' epochs
(iv) the detection of persons moving in the museum and, for instance, dressing them with clothes from the exhibition's epoch.

In order to save battery power, the camera is only activated in the app when the AR option is selected in the interface.  The app also tracked users through the museum, recommending objects of interest nearby.
 
To help explain and predict user acceptance of this device the researchers developed the acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) model which the researcher’s findings suggest explains approximately 70% of the variance in behavioural intention and 50% of the variance in technology use, being composed of seven constructs:
(i)performance expectancy (expectations about what the app offers, or will be able to do)
(ii)effort expectancy (how easy, or difficult it appears)
(iii)social influence (the extent to which this is perceived as a social activity)
(iv)facilitating conditions
(v)hedonic motivation (such as the intention to try the app)
(vi)price value
(vii)habit.

FINDINGS
- In terms of behaviour intention, friends, family, and influencer opinions contributed to use of the App.
 - Effort expectancy, denoted by user’s perception of their skill and ability to use the app was also influential. 
- In terms of the way that the app was used, facilitating conditions have more impact, followed by the behaviour intentions, where users believed that they had the resources and the knowledge necessary to use the App.
- Also, cross compatibility with others technologies contributed to its acceptance and usage, e.g. the ability to search for additional information about museum's objects and about auxiliary services.
In this case expectations about the way that the app should perform did not significantly influence behavioural intention. The greatest impact related to effort expectancy and facilitating conditions.

Rodrigues, J.M., Ramos, C.M., Pereira, J.A., Sardo, J.D. and Cardoso, P.J., 2019. Mobile Five Senses Augmented Reality System: Technology Acceptance Study. IEEE Access, 7, pp.163022-163033.