Digital Storytelling and User Experience in Online Exhibition Development

Abstract

As of 2022, the average user spends 40% of their waking hours connected to the internet. Where do museums fit, then, in a world with shrinking attention spans and ever-expanding media? How can museums engage visitors in ways that encourage learning and reflection, while also meeting their audience’s modern tastes for fast, digestible content? This project examines this issue from the perspective of online exhibition development and digital storytelling. It explores how exhibition narratives become more engaging and meaningful when they are made interactive, and when visitors are granted some degree of agency over a story. My own online exhibition, Constructing Curiosity, presents a single thematic narrative told twice—once with a linear structure, and once with interactive, non-linear features using ArcGIS StoryMaps by Esri. The narrative is based on an interpretation of artwork from the late fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries, during the period of European contact and exchange with the Americas. The two juxtaposed versions of Constructing Curiosity demonstrate how an online exhibition constructed with digital storytelling technology results in an interactive, engaging, and multimedia experience. This project investigates the potential applications of digital storytelling in online exhibitions, and their combined ability to expand the traditionally narrow western museum audience.