In recent years design with augmented reality applications for cultural heritage purposes have increased and their usefulness for informal learning and tourist experiences is improving (Haugstvedt and Krogstie, 2012; Liestøl 2014). However, there are still significant challenges with using Augmented Reality technology for cultural heritage applications in open urban environments using GPS location. Even if the potential for rich experiences is great, the continued lack of precision of available GPS location and direction in smart phones create particular challenges for the interaction and experience design. This paper presents the experiences from a project that underwent several iterations in 2017 and 2018, using mobile Augmented Reality and 360 panoramic photography in a mobile application that foregrounded historical narratives in urban heritage environments. Specifically, the narratives were about the colonial past in the Danish capital Copenhagen, a past whose traces are still present in the architecture and history of noted places such as the famous Tivoli in the city as well as in archives and museums. This contested and fragmented colonial past live in digital archives that require design and exhibition practices in order to find their way to a larger audience. 

Our project Finding Alberta was one such intervention. The extended reality (XR) web-based application, using a now depreciated platform called Argon (Speiginer et al 2015) but which was created using web programming and therefore is transferable, was part of a larger set of experiences, workshops and installations that brought to life black persons who were once taken to Denmark from the Virgin Islands, then under Danish rule. The point of the urban AR experience was to let the visitor follow in the footsteps of two children - Victor and Alberta - in order to better comprehend their lives and ultimately their fate in Denmark, from the human exhibition to early death of Alberta in 1917. However, the difficulty of properly leading visitors to GPS points and understand fully in what directions they are facing once they reach those points proved a design challenge that we were only partially able to successfully work around. This paper presents some of the design choices we made in order to still create a compelling experience while working around the limits of the affordances of mobile AR.