iWareBatik is two digital tools (a website and a mobile app) designed and developed to communicate the value of Indonesian Batik, a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage in 2009. Such tools have been evaluated through a panel of 997 bachelor students recruited in 33 Indonesian universities. They have been involved in a process that encompassed user testing activities, filling in a survey related to them, participating in a focus group, and writing a short essay. 156 of them later on took part in hackathon type of competition, aimed at suggesting possible improvements to the iWareBatik set of tools. This paper outlines the overall design of the evaluation activities, and presents in detail the results of the user testing and the related survey, highlighting positive elements and dimensions to be improved. Such evaluation exercise is not only for the set of digital tools at stake, but can provide a relevant model for all those projects aiming at using digital media in the field of intangible cultural heritage, helping to fill-in the gap between design, development, and evaluation.
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Indonesian tourism has been promoting extensively the country's heritage, be it tangible or intangible. In particular, Batik hand-drawn tradition is featured as a major attraction, encompassing materials and production techniques, motifs, fashion and wearing rules, as well as its philosophic and spiritual roots. Batik has been, additionally, enlisted in 2009 among the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list, providing a further opportunity for Indonesian tourism to leverage on this. An extensive research, covering both the Indonesian and the English languages, so to cater for domestic and international travelers, has been performed online in order to unveil the role played by Batik within the tourism-related online narratives. Such research has considered the main actors (be they national or international ones), has well as the most frequent types of contents and viewpoints on the Batik online tourism-related world of meaning. While a clear role of Batik as part of Indonesia-related tourism narratives is depicted, the research shows that most of the values stressed by UNESCO are only seldom covered and that there is room for improvement when it comes to providing a deeper understanding of Batik to domestic and international travelers.
