An enriched visit to the botanical garden: co-designing tools and contents

The exploitation of Virtual and Augmented Reality in the context of cultural heritage and tourism is increasing. These new technologies enable to integrate the traditional cultural contents and innovative experience modalities. Several cultural sites provide visitors with such systems to create an immersive visiting experience. However, limited attention has been paid so far to the exploitation of such technologies in naturalistic cultural sites. This paper describes the project "This is (not) just a tree", an applied research project aiming to develop an advanced system exploiting Virtual and Augmented Reality technology, which will enable visitors to enjoy closer experiences with plants and their interactions with animals. Special attention will be devoted to involving both stakeholders and target users in the development, thereby applying a co-design approach. Here we report on the participatory design method deployed to gather and organize requirements from stakeholders, the strategies implemented to inquire target users on their preferences, and the resulting implications for the application design.