User-Centric Mobile Application Design for Virtual Tours of Cultural Heritage Sites

This paper introduces a user-centric mobile application framework designed to support both virtual exploration and real-world navigation of cultural heritage sites through the integration of cloud-based data management and real-time mapping services. The system employs a modular architecture in which an Android-based Admin module facilitates secure creation, retrieval, update, and deletion (CRUD) of site records in a Firebase Realtime Database, while an End-User module enables intuitive browsing, detail viewing, and route-finding functionalities. Key technical components include low-cognitive-load interface patterns, offline caching strategies, and seamless interaction with the Google Maps and Yandex Maps APIs for map rendering and turn-by-turn directions. Black-box testing confirmed robust functional performance under nominal and fault conditions, and usability evaluations with thirty participants yielded high task success rates (>94 %), low average completion times (<8 s), and strong satisfaction scores (mean SUS = 85). Qualitative feedback further indicated that 92 % of users experienced enhanced spatial comprehension when engaging with the panoramic interior viewer. These findings demonstrate that the proposed design effectively balances graphical fidelity, usability, and reliability, even in variable connectivity scenarios. Future work will extend the platform with multimodal narratives, AI-driven personalization, and longitudinal field deployments across diverse cultural contexts to advance digital preservation and lifelong learning in heritage interpretation.