Citation: Meng, L.; Liu, Y.; Li, K.;
Lyu, R. Research on a User-Centered
Evaluation Model for Audience
Experience and Display Narrative of
Digital Museums. Electronics 2022, 11,
1445. https://doi.org/10.3390/
electronics11091445
Academic Editor: Rashid Mehmood
Received: 24 March 2022
Accepted: 28 April 2022
Published: 29 April 2022
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Article
Research on a User-Centered Evaluation Model for Audience
Experience and Display Narrative of Digital Museums
Lei Meng
1,
*, Yuan Liu
2,
* , Kaiwen Li
1
and Ruimin Lyu
2,
*
1
School of Design, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214125, China; likaiwen121600@163.com
2
School of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214125, China
* Correspondence: menglei@jiangnan.edu.cn (L.M.); lyuan1800@jiangnan.edu.cn (Y.L.);
ruiminlyu@jiangnan.edu.cn (R.L.)
Abstract:
As culture becomes a value dimension of economic and social development worldwide,
museums as a social medium are given more missions and expectations. Mobile Internet technology is
empowering digital museums in the epidemic context, bringing new public cultural service content to
the public. In this paper, we focus on the website quality of user experience in the current construction
of digital museums. By analyzing the components of 20 digital museums, three models with different
tendencies are abstracted. Then the three models are implemented as prototype websites, and their
user experience was evaluated by experiment. Result shows that website content and user identity
differences affect website quality, user attitudes, and user intentions. Rich contextual information
contributes to the experience, and the “professional group” generally agrees less with the digital
museum experience than the “non-professional group”. This research has implications for the study
of digital museum user groups, experience analysis, and content construction.
Keywords: digital museum; experience design; user-centered design; human-computer interaction
1. Introduction
Culture has become a value dimension of economic and social development worldwide
in today’s society. The development of information technology, modern communication,
virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and other digital technologies in this century provides
an opportunity to upgrade the development of cultural display media. As the frontier of
cultural preservation and dissemination, museums have been given additional missions
and expectations with the trend of global growth. However, COVID-19 has profoundly
impacted the global production, exchange, and dissemination of culture. For this reason,
museums, as social media, should make full use of digital platforms. Constructing strategies
compatible with contemporary cultural and intelligent contexts and in harmony with
modern social and epidemic contexts can meet people’s information needs for search,
recommendation, and communication.
COVID-19 has directly affected the social service efficiency of museums. The National
Museum of China, for example, received 7.39 million visitors in 2019, but in 2020, due to the
epidemic, only 1.6 million visitors entered the museum, down 78.35% year-on-year [
1
,
2
]. As
one of the important ways to digitize museums in the epidemic context, digital museums
are best able meet people’s spiritual and cultural life needs in special times and highlight
the value of museums in the public sphere and social construction. Google Arts & Culture
and Europeana bring together museum information from around the world in a digital
space, allowing people to enjoy the rich diversity of cultural heritage resources from around
the world via the web [
3
]. As a fully online art museum, VOMA (Virtual Online Museum of
Art) uses virtual roaming technology to collaborate with museums and artists worldwide
to normalize online curation and virtual exhibition viewing.
On the other hand, the National Palace Museum is at the forefront of digitalization
in China’s comprehensive museums. With applications such as the Digital Repository
Electronics 2022, 11, 1445. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11091445 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics
