Evaluation of virtual tour in an online museum: Exhibition of Architecture of the Forbidden City

Abstract

Online virtual museum tours combine museum authority and an academic approach with the diversity and interactivity of online resources; such tours have become an essential resource for online scientific research and education. Many important museums around the world are developing this type of online service. Comprehensive evaluation of such tours is, however, urgently needed to ensure effectiveness. This paper establishes a heuristic evaluation scale based on the literature. Taking the online virtual tour of the Exhibition of Architecture of the Forbidden City as a case study, confirmatory factor analysis was then carried out to improve the scale. Interviews were conducted to discuss and analyze the research results. The developed evaluation scale has four dimensions: authenticity, interaction, navigation, and learning. The results from the case study showed, first, that the exhibition had visual authenticity, but the behavioral authenticity was insufficient; second, the exhibition was generally interactive, but this aspect could be improved by enriching the links; third, the lack of effective navigation design for the exhibit was the main factor affecting experience quality. Fourth, the exhibition was informative and supported learning, but needs further improvement to the quantity and quality of information provided. Finally, the interviews revealed that the online exhibition did not entirely support people of different ages and abilities, so it needs further improvement to be wholly inclusive.

Evaluating the Usability and Learning Potential of a Virtual Museum Tour Application for Schools

“…In Phase B, the usability testing participants completed a virtual tours evaluation instrument. The questionnaire was an adapted version of Li, Nie and Ye's scale [6], which was inspired by Sutcliffe and Gault's [8] and Kabassi et al's [9] scales to the study of virtual tours. The adapted questionnaire used in this study focused on four dimensions of the virtual tours experience, including authenticity (e.g., the artefacts give me a very real feeling), interactivity (e.g., I understand what I can operate and what I can't), navigation (e.g., I know where we start and where we end), and learning potential (e.g., I can assess gained knowledge on the exhibition via the available features) (Table 1).…”

“…Participants have a third-person camera perspective and can navigate their avatars in the museum by using the navigation arrows on their keyboards. Previous work proposes a set of scales for evaluating user experience in virtual museum tours, including several dimensions, such as usability, entertainment, and learning [4]; visual, interaction and experience [5]; and authenticity, interactivity, navigation and learning [6]. However, these scales do not take into account VISITOR's particular feature that allows end-users to modify the virtual space and add their own elements.…”

A Review of Virtual Display Construction Methods

“…In the process of switching exhibition areas, the visual after switching is not consistent with the viewer's expectations. The curators often face the exhibits they need to display when setting the camera's entrance perspective, instead of changing the orientation perspective before switching, which is conducive to focusing on the exhibits' content, but the inconsistency between the perspective and behavioral expectations during the switching process will easily lead to the viewers' unfamiliarity and isolation [30]. 2.…”

Comparing VR and Desktop 360 Video Museum Tours

“…The Covid-19 pandemic, with its requirements for social isolation and restricted mobility, gave a kick-start to the development of ways to attend art exhibitions and museums remotely [7,9]. There is a growing demand to further improve the user experience of such remote services, and to further evaluate and develop virtual tours [5].…”

“…Virtual tours are an increasingly important form of remotely attending museums and exhibitions [2], and prior work has demonstrated a vast amount of different solutions utilizing 360 photo or video materials or 3D models. A virtual tour heuristic evaluation scale with four dimensions, authenticity, interaction, navigation, and learning, has been proposed as a methodology to assess such tours [5]. In the context of tourism, Wagler and Hanus studied visitors taking a guided audio tour of a state capitol building, and report that the immersive 360 video tour and the physical tour both outperformed the experience with a 2D video tour [12].…”