MixMyVisit – A Solution for the Automatic Creation of Videos to Enhance the Visitors’ Experience

Abstract

The experience of visitors in cultural spaces is not limited to the actual moments in that space. These institutions, like museums, seek to enrich the visitor’s experience not only during but also after the visit. Creating solutions to capture memories of the visits can be a way to extend the experience. Therefore, this paper reports on a proposal of a system that automatically creates personalized memory videos of the visit to these spaces that may contribute to enrich the visitor’s experience. Using simple devices, with NFC technology, the solution allows to identify the route of visitors in cultural places. For the solution, a bot was developed to interact with the visitor through a chat implemented in a social network (Facebook Messenger), allowing the visitor, through this chat, to share with the system its own content (photos or videos) aiming to be included in the video of the visit. Finally, a server-side video rendering engine, supported by the open-source ffmpeg software, and a responsive online video editor were implemented. The characteristics and main technical developments of this solution are presented in this paper. It also describes the evaluation carried with a functional prototype with 12 participants and the main results achieved. The solution proved to be captivating for the participants, with most of them considering having a great interest in the availability of such a solution in cultural spaces and/or museums. The evaluation also made it possible to obtain a set of improvement suggestions to be integrated in a future version aimed to be widely available to the public.