User Experience in Digital Museums: A Case Study of the Palace Museum in Beijing

Abstract

Digital technologies have enhanced the user experiences of museum visiting, both on-site visiting and online visiting. With smart mobile devices, people can visit digital museums and acquire information, service and learning materials anytime that they want. During virtual tours, the visitors have the right to design their own paths and interact with the collections in their own ways without barriers and glass walls. Augmented reality technologies allow museums to bring collections to life and change the perspectives of the viewers. The interactions between museums, visitors and artifacts raises new requirements for exhibition designs. How to design valuable and enjoyable virtual experiences for dynamic and effective communication between museums and visitors is an important issue for museum professionals and designers. This paper provides a case study of an important museum in China, the Palace Museum. This paper analyzed the user experiences of the mobile applications of the Palace Museum and examine the factors affecting the user experience in digital museums with the Interactive Experience Model [1]. The findings of this case study will be valuable for museum professional, designers and researchers in designing enjoyable experiences for digital museums.