Balancing adaptivity and customisation : in search of sustainable personalisation in cultural heritage

Personalisation for cultural heritage aims at delivering to visitors the right stories at the right time. Our endeavour to determine which features to use for adaptation starts from acknowledging what forms of personalisation curators value as most meaningful. Working in collaboration with curators we have explored the different features that must be taken into account: some are related to the content (multiple interpretation layers), others to the context of delivery (where and when), but some are idiosyncratic (“match my mood”, “something that is relevant to my life”). The findings reveal that a sustainable personalization needs to accurately balance: (i) support to curators in customising stories to different visitors; (ii) algorithms for the system to dynamically model aspects of the visit and instantiate the correct behaviour; and (iii) an active role for visitors to choose the type of experience they would like to have today.