Museum Context Research Articles

Technology affordances, actualisation and adaptation for heritage preservation: A case study of Beijing's Palace Museum

AbstractMuseums are vital cultural and educational institutions that play a key role in heritage preservation. Despite the importance of museums, the interaction between these conventional institutions and advanced technologies remains relatively underexplored in information systems (IS) research. Adopting affordance‐actualisation (A–A) theory as the theoretical lens, we conducted an in‐depth case study of the Palace Museum in Beijing, China, to investigate its implementation of evolving IS for heritage preservation. We identify three key affordances of these systems and develop a conceptual model illustrating the process of actualising these affordances. Our model extends A–A theory by adding an adaptation phase, wherein the museum responds to the outcomes of the actualisation process by amplifying the achieved outcomes and altering the unintended ones. Additionally, we uncover a hierarchical structure among these affordances, revealing a progressive pattern of actualisation specific to heritage preservation in museums. This research contributes to the literature on A–A theory, heritage preservation in museums, and IS implementation. Furthermore, it provides guidance for practitioners, particularly those in museum contexts, in effectively implementing IS for heritage preservation.

Approaches to Identifying Emotions and Affections During the Museum Learning Experience in the Context of the Future Internet

The Future Internet aims to revolutionize digital interaction by integrating advanced technologies like AI and IoT, enabling a dynamic and resilient network. It envisions emotionally intelligent systems that can interpret and respond to human feelings, creating immersive, empathy-driven learning experiences. This evolution aspires to form a responsive digital ecosystem that seamlessly connects technology and human emotion. This paper presents a computational model aimed at enhancing the emotional aspect of learning experiences within museum environments. The model is designed to represent and manage affective and emotional feedback, with a focus on how emotions can significantly impact the learning process in a museum context. The proposed model seeks to identify and quantify emotions during a visitor’s engagement with museum exhibits. To achieve this goal, we primarily explored the following: (i) methods and techniques for assessing and recognizing emotional responses in museum visitors, (ii) feedback management strategies based on the detection of visitors’ emotional states. Then, the methodology was tested on 1000 cases via specific questionnaire forms, along with the presentation of images and short videos, and the results of data analysis are reported. The findings contribute toward establishing a comprehensive methodology for the identification and quantification of the emotional state of museum visitors.

Using extended reality technologies in modern museums

This study explores the nature, core features, and evolution of extended reality (XR) technologies in the 21st century, focusing on their potential in the museum context. It examines academic research and representative examples of cultural heritage enhancement from international museum practices. The specific characteristics and properties of each technology within XR’s broader scope, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality, are identified and analyzed. In addition, the study explores designs or case studies of these technologies’ application in the museum environment, including the emerging Metaverse, which blends VR and AR within the same broader conceptual framework. Furthermore, the study examines why these innovative technologies resonate with museums and assesses their impact on relational communication between modern museums and the public, particularly younger audiences. It also highlights limitations or obstacles to their widespread adoption of XR technologies in museums, while outlining future prospects for their integration. Overall, the study provides a comprehensive overview of XR’s use in museums, focusing on how these technologies enhance cultural values. It offers reflection and suggestions for authors and museum professionals regarding the design and implementation of XR technologies in modern museums.

Assistance and inclusivity as a part of experience: museum context

Assistance and inclusivity as a part of experience: museum context

DeLVE into Earth's Past: A Visualization-Based Exhibit Deployed Across Multiple Museum Contexts.

While previous work has found success in deploying visualizations as museum exhibits, it has not investigated whether museum context impacts visitor behaviour with these exhibits. We present an interactive Deep-time Literacy Visualization Exhibit (DeLVE) to help museum visitors understand deep time (lengths of extremely long geological processes) by improving proportional reasoning skills through comparison of different time periods. DeLVE uses a new visualization idiom, Connected Multi-Tier Ranges, to visualize curated datasets of past events across multiple scales of time, relating extreme scales with concrete scales that have more familiar magnitudes and units. Museum staff at three separate museums approved the deployment of DeLVE as a digital kiosk, and devoted time to curating a unique dataset in each of them. We collect data from two sources, an observational study and system trace logs. We discuss the importance of context: similar museum exhibits in different contexts were received very differently by visitors. We additionally discuss differences in our process from Sedlmair et al.'s design study methodology which is focused on design studies triggered by connection with collaborators rather than the discovery of a concept to communicate. Supplemental materials are available at: https://osf.io/z53dq/.

Exploring the role of immersive technology in digitally representing contemporary crafts within hybrid museum exhibitions: a scoping review

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the complex design process of developing museum exhibitions that feature contemporary craft artifacts, while leveraging immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and extended reality (XR) to augment the visitor experience of these objects. Through a scoping review of current practices, it investigates how these technologies augment the display and interpretation of diverse craft materials within museum contexts. Through an analysis of 35 peer-reviewed publications related to the application of immersive technologies in museums, it delineates the roles these technologies play in the design and presentation of hybrid (physical/virtual) museum exhibitions, contrasting their effectiveness and challenges with traditional physical displays. By emphasizing the design process, this study sheds light on innovative strategies for enhancing visitor engagement and digitally preserving contemporary craft knowledge, offering a detailed roadmap for future researchers, practitioners, and cultural institutions interested in the intersection of technology, crafts, and cultural representation.

Digital object-based learning for people with ASD: a training experience within heritage education contexts

The paper aims at presenting a training experience for future educators carried out during the academic year 2022/2023 on the use of Digital Object-Based Learning (OBL) for people with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Three different webinars, designed within the Erasmus+ Spektrum project, have been realised with a focus on the design, implementation, and evaluation of personalised museum educational experiences to foster social inclusion and wellbeing within people with specific educational needs through Object-based learning (OBL). As stated by the literature in the field, hands-on learning within heritage education contexts can really enhance people's interest in and understanding of a topic/subject and develop important transverse skills, thus promoting cultural participation of users at risk of social exclusion. During the webinars, specific models for planning learning sessions with ASD people were presented, together with wellbeing and empathy assessment tools to be used within museum context. The training experience ended with a digital OBL session, where museum educators were asked to collaboratively analyse, interpret, and evaluate digitised museum objects. More than 90 in-training educators, from different Italian and Spanish institutions, attended the webinars: results from a final assessment survey are presented in order to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the training experience, the soft and hard skills most promoted and the educational needs of the participants, trying to identify challenges and potential transformations within digital heritage education context.

EmojiChat: Toward Designing Emoji-Driven Social Interaction in VR Museums

Museums have traditionally been places of learning, evolving into spaces that also facilitate socializing. This shift is particularly evident in virtual reality (VR) museums, which have become popular venues for activities like friend gatherings. However, education has long established the social norm that museums need to “maintaining silence.” Even in virtual environments, this can influence visitor behavior. This perception often prevents people from using verbal communication, leading them to prefer quieter forms of interaction. In museums, including the VR museums that now largely replicate the layout of physical museums, this preference may be reinforced by specific features, such as spaciousness, quietness, and block-based layouts, which may create visual obstructions, restricting interaction modes dependent on shared view, such as gesture interaction. These limitations necessitate the introduction of an additional interaction mode. Emojis, with their capacity for rapid message exchange and adjustable positioning, emerge as a suitable interaction mode in this context. Thus, we introduce EmojiChat, an innovative VR museum experience designed to respect the social norms of traditionally keeping quiet while promoting natural interaction. We first design and iterate a customized emoji set for the museum context through semi-structured interviews, participatory design, and an online survey. Then, this emoji set is integrated into a VR museum to facilitate interaction between visitors. Finally, we conduct a comparative study to evaluate the performance of EmojiChat. Our results show that the integration of emojis can improve communication enjoyment and efficiency. Additionally, we identify usage patterns for interaction modes and the advantages offered by emojis. We also identify several challenges that point toward future directions for enhancing emoji integration and facilitating social interaction.

Conceptualizing sustainable communities through an exhibition in a university museum

Sustainability communication arises in the face of complex socio-environmental crises that manifest on different scales and in different ecosystems. Museums and science centres, as cultural institutions, are key to building social representations and generating discourses and experiences in their visitors to facilitate engagement in the search for future alternatives. This empirical research, conducted at the Universum Science Museum of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, seeks to contribute to the advancement of the academic field of sustainability communication by analysing the main elements and exhibition practices related to sustainability in the exhibition Producing by Conserving: Biodiversity and Sustainable Communities. We investigated how sustainability is expressed in the museum, utilizing the proposed perspective of analysis based on four typologies of science exhibitions. We employed qualitative analysis to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the exhibition. We identified central aspects and limitations in communication concerning sustainability that could nurture communication practices in demonstrations and other exhibitions with related themes. The implications of this study extend beyond the specific context of the university museum. They can be useful for communication practices in universities and other cultural institutions seeking to develop a culture of sustainability and envision transformation of future societies.

Digitally enriched exhibitions: Perspectives from Museum professionals

In approaching museum digitalisation, museum professionals are under-represented in tourism research. Yet they are key stakeholders whose opinions can help refine tourism knowledge. To address this gap, the present study assessed their social representation of digitally enriched exhibitions. In this two-phase qualitative study, 146 blog posts and 26 videos generated by museum professionals were retrieved and 22 interviews were completed. The analysis suggested the social representation is featured by 1) educational intent, 2) artefact-centred design, 3) complex visitor experience management, 4) critique of lacking cultural values, and 5) phygital strategy. Three themata were identified and explicated through in-depth interviews, namely education—entertainment, artefact-centred—visitor-centred, and materiality—digitalisation. The research serves as a meaningful portrayal of museum experts’ views. The museum context is socially and institutionally distinct. Studying and making digital experiences with museums adheres to heritage discourse and artefact materiality, in which concepts like hierolatry and factishism deserve contemplation.

Understanding of non-immersive virtual reality technology in the context of museums via the lens of stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) and aesthetics frameworks

ABSTRACT Guided by the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S–O–R) and aesthetics frameworks, this research investigated the impacts of non-immersive virtual reality (VR) aesthetics on visitors’ perceived utilitarian and hedonic values, attitudes toward VR, and visit intention. Three hundred and thirty-five respondents who had completed a virtual guided tour provided by the Hong Kong Railway Museum by using personal devices such as computers and smartphones without having the aid of more advanced technologies were surveyed. The results revealed that design aesthetics, interactivity aesthetics, and presence aesthetics of VR could strongly predict users’ cognitive and emotional reactions regarding their perceptions of utilitarian and hedonistic values, their attitude toward using VR, and their intention to visit the museums, with the exception that interactivity aesthetics was found to have no effects on the perceived utilitarian values. This study contributed by providing a newly formulated and tested theoretical framework that aids understanding of the role of aesthetics in VR technology in the specific context of museums. It also sheds light for museum operators on how VR innovation can evoke positive responses and attract more visitors.

Museums, Climate Change and Energy Education: A Digital Discourse Analysis

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to explore how science and environmentally related museums in Alberta, Canada are digitally engaging with climate change and energy education. This inquiry utilised qualitative discourse analysis to examine the discourses, dynamics and tensions present in digital museum contexts related to climate and energy education in Alberta. Drawing on Eisner’s three curricula — the explicit, implicit and null — the study focused on museums’ websites and social media activity. The museums studied share common foci on science, environment, or energy but range in size and location. As a long-standing energy-based economy, Alberta provides an interesting, and often contested, setting to observe climate and energy education in practice at museums, many of which exist in communities and within governance and stakeholder networks which are connected to the energy industry. Discourse-connected findings, discussion and implications are presented in relation to museums’ institutional mandates, curricular initiatives, pedagogical practices, special events and infrastructure initiatives.

Evaluating visitors’ experience in museum: Comparing artificial intelligence and multi-partitioned analysis

Analysing visitors' behaviour in a museum or in a cultural site is a crucial element to manage spaces and artworks arrangement as well as improving the visit experience. This paper presents the preliminary results of the ARTEMISIA project, exploiting Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to study, design and develop a methodology to interpret visitors' behaviour within a museum context, namely the Museum of Rome in Palazzo Braschi (Rome, Italy). The aim is to combine literature on users' experience (UX) analysis with experimental data coming from the visitor anonymous tracking out of motion sensors (users' stand-still positions, viewpoint direction, movements), merging approaches of different research domains. Through the use of agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithms, four categories of visitors were identified, then associated to user profiles emerged by UX evaluations. Such analysis may lead to new forms of visitors profiling and to the development of a new generation of customised applications in public and private contexts. Identifying and predicting users’ patterns with respect to museum halls arrangement may also be useful to suggest improvement in the museum spaces and exhibitions (new indications, updated storytelling or changes in thematic configuration).© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Application and Exploration of Data Visualization Technology in Artistic Expression and Exhibition

Embarking on the transformation of virtual art museums, the confluence of data visualization technology and deep learning emerges as a catalyst for redefining artistic expression. Driven by the desire to change traditional approaches, this work utilizes a sophisticated deep learning model, the self-attention-based cycle-consistent generative adversarial network (SA-CCGAN), for transformative purposes. The objective of proposed Modernizing Virtual Art: The Collaboration of Data Visualization Technology and Self-Attention-Based Cycle-Consistent Generative Adversarial Network for Artistic Expression (MVA: DVT & SA-CCGAN) is to elevate artistic expression and exhibition practices within the virtual space, marking a paradigm shift in traditional approaches. SA-CCGAN, renowned for its ability to generate realistic and coherent artistic representations, serves as the cornerstone of this transformative endeavor. The workflow intricately incorporates SA-CCGAN into the virtual art museum context, enhancing stylized outcomes and capturing global geometric features. This yields a computationally efficient representation of high-dimensional visual data, revolutionizing digital art presentation. The fusion of data visualization technology, creativity, and meticulous design not only signals innovation but also has the potential to redefine the virtual art landscape, fostering accessibility, engagement, and a deeper cultural exchange in digital art exploration.

Questions of scale sensitivity, experience and branding culture in and beyond Hans Christian Andersen's House

With a new museum, Hans Christian Andersen's House, the Danish city of Odense has intensified the relationship between the nineteenth-century author, a son of the city, and the architectural spaces of today. The museum opened in 2021 but has drawn much attention since 2016 when Kengo Kuma and Associates were announced as winners of the competition to design this new house of fairy tales. The combination of Andersen, a cherished author whose works are read worldwide, and Kuma, an esteemed world-famous architect, seemed a perfect match to secure attention from a wider public and attract local and international visitors. The museum's architecture and urban garden form a focal point in the exhibition design but are also central elements in a larger transformation project in Odense. Entangled in all this is Andersen: his fairy tales, his personality, and the places he lived in Odense. The article explores how experiential visions and branding culture are balanced, and argues that the museum was created with a sensitivity towards different scales that form the relations with the museum's contexts. How such scale sensitivity is connected to the materiality, spaces, and bodily experiences of the museum is analysed through theories by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Celia Lury.

The ability of experience design characteristics to elicit epistemic value, hedonic value, and visitor satisfaction in a wine museum

PurposeApplying the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory in a wine museum context, this paper aims to examine how and why experience design characteristics influence visitor satisfaction, particularly investigating the role of epistemic (learning) and hedonic (having fun) values as the underlying mechanisms of this relationship.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected field survey data from 652 visitors at a world-leading wine museum. The authors tested the research model on ten modules of the museum using path analysis and a bootstrap approach; the authors further conducted mediation analyses to test how the design of the museum’s modules influenced perceived value and satisfaction.FindingsContent comprehensibility and surprise, as well as interactivity and ease of use, are core design characteristics that drive visitor satisfaction. More significantly, hedonic and epistemic values play a significant mediating role in influencing the relationship between design characteristics and visitor satisfaction.Practical implicationsThe authors provide clear and actionable recommendations to help managers design museums that provide educational, entertaining and satisfying visitor experiences.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to apply the S-O-R theory in a wine museum context. The significance of this study lies in demonstrating how and why experience design characteristics support the creation of an edutainment visitor experience that drives visitor satisfaction.

Museum Acoustics: Classification and auralization of design approaches

Architecture defines various aspects of museum spaces. Despite often being considered secondary importance by some deciders and designers, the acoustic environment significantly shapes the interpretation of exhibitions and human-building interactions. Focusing on enhancing museum acoustics, this study builds upon previous research that developed a methodology for simulating and evaluating museum soundscapes through psychophysical experiments in immersive environments, showing that participants preferred congruent soundscapes over generic noise maskers [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 154, A257]. Expanding on these previous investigations, our current research involves cataloging and classifying design approaches currently used within museum contexts—architectural elements, acoustic characteristics, spatial distribution, exhibition strategies, multimodal approaches, etc. Subsequently, we present an auralization method for these museum spaces using the ray tracing method developed for collaborative virtual reality systems [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 143, 1824]. This method is used within the CRAIVE-Lab at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to facilitate tangible analysis, enriching our understanding of these solutions to support future design efforts by guiding architects and acousticians to optimize the museum experience. It offers significant insights into current practices, emerging trends, or notable innovations, thereby promoting more experiential design approaches to shaping the acoustic impacts of the museum environment.

Sustainability in Hybrid Technologies for Heritage Preservation: A Scientometric Study

The use of augmented reality applied to museums to preserve and communicate cultural heritage sustainably is a topic of increasing relevance today. Museums play an essential role in preserving and disseminating culture and history, and augmented reality has emerged as a powerful technological tool to enrich the visitor experience and ensure the sustainable preservation of cultural heritage. The fundamental objective of this literature review is to explore and understand the key contributions that are being made in the field of augmented reality applied to museums, with a focus on sustainability. The literature related to this topic is dispersed in various sources of information, which motivates the need to carry out a detailed and systematic analysis incorporating sustainability aspects. To carry out this analysis, the metaphor of the “tree of science” is used. This metaphor provides a structured approach that is applied in two complementary ways. Firstly, it focuses on collecting and analyzing scientometric statistics that cover data on countries, authors, academic institutions, and research centers involved in developing augmented reality applications for museums with sustainable methodologies. This quantitative perspective offers a global view of the contributions and their geographical scope including their sustainability impact. Secondly, an evolutionary analysis based on the “tree of science” is carried out. This historical approach examines the origin and evolution of contributions in the field of augmented reality applied to museums, from its first manifestations to the most recent innovations, with an emphasis on sustainable practices. This historical approach is essential to understanding the trajectory and development of augmented reality applications in the museum context and their role in promoting sustainable cultural heritage preservation. This review aims to provide a complete and contextualized view of the use of augmented reality in museums for the sustainable preservation and communication of cultural heritage. Through a multidimensional approach encompassing scientometric statistics and historical analysis, we seek to shed light on this technology’s most significant contributions and evolution in the museum sector, with a particular focus on sustainability.

Queering Alfred Gell’s Art Nexus: Conceptualising Non-normative Relations and Queer Methods in the Art and Ethnological Museum. Context

Ethnographic collections and museums displaying them are currently facing a crisis of representation which is deeply political. Negotiations mainly take place on a national and institutional level. Yet, in order to deal with conflicts and problems that arise around ethnographic collections in a way that allows for and affirms new relationships being formed outside the realm of representational power, new perspectives and methodological tools from a grassroots level are needed. Intersectional approaches and a renewed attention to relations around ethnographic objects, especially a rethinking of the categories “artwork” versus “ethnographica”, offer a promising route for engaging with heritage as a common ground. As such, they may enable relational politics outside the centres of power. A “queering” of anthropologist Alfred Gell’s art nexus model can be instrumental for the study of queer (non-normative) relations around artworks, including so-called ethnographic objects. The paper proposes an understanding of queerness as a method in the art and museum context, informed by the anthropology of art and kinship, queer studies, and museum studies. This methodology-in-the-making should be part of a toolkit with which researchers and arts practitioners will be able to understand and actively co-create queer relations around objects in ethnographic collections and beyond.

Why Play in Museums? A Review of the Outcomes of Playful Museum Initiatives

ABSTRACT This article presents a qualitative review of 38 peer-reviewed studies on how play has been applied in museums. The objective of the review is to analyze the outcomes of playful initiatives to advance our understanding of the reasons for and effects of applying play within a museum context. The analysis reveals that playful museum initiatives are typically described as resulting in engagement, learning, and/or enjoyment. Furthermore, the article analyzes the quality of the evidence and highlights two nuancing notions distilled from conclusions found across the studies, namely that the contextual interplay is important to bear in mind when developing playful initiatives and that play is highly unpredictable and audience dependent. In conclusion, the article suggests that further research should be conducted to examine the outcomes of playful museum initiatives, particularly with a focus on other target groups than children and more comprehensive investigation and documentation of learning outcomes.