Designing information, experience and presence: an interdisciplinary approach to visual heritage

Digitisation, combined with the Internet, offers new access to heritage sites. However, overcoming the intrusion of the mediating technology to give people a feeling of 'being there'â- a psychological phenomenon known as presence â- is a fundamental challenge in developing web-based virtual heritage environments. Design is important to the communication of presence, but its role is not considered in the literature of virtual heritage or presence. In crossing matters of form, content, people and technology, issues in virtual heritage resist the processes of reduction that characterise traditional disciplinary research. This paper combines ideas from information and experience design, presence and virtual heritage to investigate how the demand for historical accuracy and heightened audience experience can be balanced in creating virtual heritage environments. Conversely, it also discusses the risks for design researchers in drawing on heterogeneous sources of knowledge, but argues that this is a way to see larger issues in design.