UNICHE D4.1 User requirements and functional specifications

The deliverable establishes the foundation for the UNICHE platform, a collaborative ecosystem for creating, deploying, and evaluating digital cultural heritage experiences. It translates the needs of heritage professionals, researchers, designers, educators, and audiences into structured requirements supporting the future development of WP5 and WP6. The methodology combines literature review with workshops, surveys, interviews, and expert consultations. Stakeholders highlighted strong demand for no-code authoring, multimedia tools, interoperability, collaboration, analytics, and AI assistance, while identifying barriers such as fragmented workflows, limited technical expertise, costs, and difficulties evaluating visitor impact. These findings inform requirements covering storytelling, accessibility, personalization, immersive experiences, repository integration, evaluation, and AI. Overall, UNICHE is designed as a full-lifecycle platform enabling users to discover and reuse trusted assets, co-create and publish experiences, analyse engagement, and improve content. Key priorities include interoperability with the ECHOES Cultural Heritage Cloud, multilingual support, rights-aware asset reuse, multi-format publishing, and human-centred AI. The deliverable is the currently submitted version – pending formal acceptance.