How ready is your museum for XR?
Two short self-assessment tools for Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality in cultural heritage institutions. They are informed by a data-mining study of 161 AAM-accredited museums in the U.S. Midwest.
Readiness Wizard
Answer nine questions one at a time. You get a readiness level, a score, and next steps for a first XR pilot and a funding angle.
Start the wizard →Predictive Rule Flowchart
Toggle seven yes/no answers and watch your path light up through a decision tree. Three booster signals can raise the result one level.
Open the flowchart →What the data showed
Key patterns
- Larger institutions with more resources lead XR adoption.
- Educational programming, especially online, is the strongest practical signal (odds ratio 3.16). Paid admission (2.88) and history-museum type (3.52) are also positive.
- Establishment date was the only individually significant predictor (p = 0.026).
- Some small and free-admission museums still adopt XR successfully. What they share is a strong focus on education.
Read the results honestly
Each question in the tools is tagged with how strongly the study supports it:
- Data-backedClear association in the study data.
- Weak signalMeasured, but the association was weak or not significant.
- Planning factorPractical consideration that was not part of the dataset.
The tools are exploratory planning aids, not validated predictions. See the methodology.
Immersive Technology for Heritage: XR Adoption in U.S. Cultural Museums
Presented at the Association for Preservation Technology International (APT) 2025 Conference in Providence, Rhode Island (session CS3.5). This work is part of a doctoral dissertation in Informatics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Sepehr (Sep) Vaez Afshar · Faculty advisor: Prof. Laura Shackelford · APT COF mentor: Caroline Alderson