VAARHeT Rehearsal Workshop Identifies Usability Refinements Before Final Validation

Internal Rehearsal Testing Validates Refinement Approach

Comprehensive rehearsal workshop on 25 June 2025 engaged Āraiši Ezerpils museum project team members in end-to-end testing of three VAARHeT pilot applications before final visitor validation sessions, identifying interface confusions, workflow gaps, content inaccuracies, and technical integration bugs requiring resolution preventing negative reception from unresolved issues that internal testing should catch before exposing to target user populations. Rehearsal participants including Eva Koljera and Jānis Meinerts provided heritage professional perspective distinct from XR Ireland development team views, revealing usability friction points and expectation mismatches that technical developers familiar with implementation details might not recognise as problematic for first-time users approaching applications without prior exposure or technical background assumptions that developers unconsciously incorporate through sustained engagement during implementation phases. Testing protocol followed identical procedures planned for visitor validation including task scenario completion, observation forms documenting difficulties, post-test questionnaires measuring satisfaction and appropriateness perceptions, and debrief discussions exploring improvement suggestions, generating realistic preview of how actual validation would proceed whilst enabling refinement cycle addressing identified issues before final sessions risking participant frustration or negative reception from preventable deficiencies undermining evaluation instrument validity.

Identified Improvements and Final Sprint Refinements

Rehearsal feedback directly shaped final refinement activities during late June early July 2025 sprint preceding visitor validation. AR avatar response length reduction addressed complaint about excessively verbose answers consuming visitor patience and attention when concise factual responses would serve information needs more efficiently, implementing maximum token limits and response summarisation prompts constraining dialogue generation to essential content without elaborate contextual expansion that theoretical knowledge delivery might value yet routine museum information queries find unnecessarily lengthy. VR environment visual cue additions improved content discoverability after rehearsal revealed floor and doors building component events proved difficult to trigger without explicit prompting, validating concern that pure voice-only interaction creates discovery friction when visitors cannot determine what questions to ask without experimentation many users abandon, implementing hybrid voice-visual interface with text labels indicating available content categories whilst preserving voice activation as interaction mechanism. Translation application UI clarity improvements addressed feedback about button state indication insufficiency preventing users from confident operation, adding explicit visual feedback confirming language selections, active recording status, and successful Bluetooth pairing to AR wearables reducing uncertainty and interaction anxiety. Stability testing following usability refinements validated applications maintained acceptable performance supporting 5-6 concurrent users simulating validation session peak loads, addressing intermittent connectivity failures and cloud processing timeouts through retry logic, timeout extension, and local caching enabling graceful handling of network disruption without catastrophic functionality loss frustrating participants.

Value of Iterative Validation and Progressive Quality Improvement

Rehearsal workshop exemplifies iterative validation value where formative assessment during development enables refinement before summative evaluation determines deployment viability, treating usability as progressive improvement target rather than fixed characteristic evaluated once after implementation completion without subsequent adaptation opportunity. This approach enabled VAARHeT to enter final visitor validation with substantially higher quality applications than initial implementation would have provided, increasing likelihood of positive reception and meaningful evaluation results whilst reducing risk that preventable usability issues would dominate participant feedback obscuring insights about fundamental value propositions and strategic development priorities beyond interface refinement addressable through incremental improvement. Transferable lesson for heritage technology development emphasises investing in multiple validation cycles with different stakeholder groups (internal teams, institutional partners, target users) rather than single validation event attempting comprehensive assessment, creating progressive quality improvement pathway where each validation iteration generates specific actionable improvements implemented before subsequent testing rather than accumulating extensive feedback lists attempting simultaneous resolution creating prioritisation difficulty and potential overlooking of critical issues buried within comprehensive improvement inventories.