Contributions to the design of mobile applications for visitors of Botanical Gardens

Abstract

Botanical Gardens are among the most visited touristic attractions, offering scientific, educational, cultural and leisure activities to preserve and enhance heritage and disseminating specialised knowledge on science and history. There are several mobile applications (apps) to support visitors of Botanical Gardens, which explore augmented reality technologies to enrich their experience. Our work aims to systematize a set of requirements that must be considered in the development of these apps. We have applied them in the development of an app for a Botanical Garden available for Android and iOS. Preliminary data analysis of the use of our app revealed some characteristics of the visitors and the preferred tours. Meanwhile we are evaluating our app by conducting a user study.