Design Science Research: Building evaluation into the construction of indigenous cultural artefacts in New Zealand

Abstract: There is increasing interest in the technological construction of the cultural artefact. However the uptake of technology may be coming at a cost to the historical values sincere to cultural groups. This paper reports on evaluation techniques applied towards a recent research effort delivering a virtual reality experience that embraced the traditions of indigenous Maori within a learning, language and cultural context. A 3D computer generated artefact was constructed portraying an indigenous Maori mythological story able to interact with cultural objects using Design Science Research (DSR) as a research method, then evaluated as a cultural deployment using an array of evaluation techniques. This article expands the research material available to cultural research in DSR, as well as demonstrating how DSR evaluation can be viewed during the construction of an indigenous cultural artefact.