In the context of Ruritage project, i-strategies founder Gianluca Vagnarelli coordinated the development of augmented reality (AR) pathway for Appignano del Tronto municipality, an Italian village based in Marche region.
The AR pathway was developed combining storytelling, digital and AR expertises and following five steps.
Collect. The collection phase consisted in acquiring the raw materials necessary to create the stories as the main content of the AR pathway. In the case of the municipality of Appignano del Tronto, the raw material consisted in old newspaper articles, local history books, oral memories of the inhabitants, and interviews with witnesses of relevant events;
Select. On the base on the raw material collected, ten stories to tell were selected. Three criteria guided the selection process: 1) stories with the most interesting narrative sides (conflict, fear, mystery, local legends, folk belief); 2) stories able, at the same time, to entertain the audience and to evoke the local identity/values of the municipality; 3) stories that could be localized in a specific area allowing a balanced distribution of them on the entire territory.
Storyboard. Once selected, the ten stories were storyboarded. For doing this, two experts were involved: a) A storyteller who storyboarded the ten stories drafting around ten illustrations per story using pictures and texts. The drafts were produced using the Canva platform; b) On the base on the drafted illustrations a professional illustrator was involved to illustrate the ten stories.
Digitalize. The digitalization process consisted of the use of storytelling and video editing. Following the structures of the storyboards, a professional video editor made ten videos digitalizing the illustrated stories, adding music, voice-off, sound and video effects, subtitles in English and texts.
Augmented Reality. Thanks to the technical partner Skylab Studios, an augmented reality infrastructure based on interactive panels with QR codes, was realized at Appignano del Tronto (see the map in the picture). Each panel correspond to a story. Using their smartphones, tourists can access and enjoy video stories and additional information material (texts and pictures) related to the territory.
Universities students can directly experience the AR pathways visiting Appignano del Tronto. Additional learning material related to the methodology used to implement the augmented reality pathway is provided by i-strategies.
You can find more information about the Appignano del Tronto Augmented Reality pathway here.
In the video here below one of the stories of the Augmented Reality pathway.