Analyzing Behavior and User Experience in Online Museum Virtual Tours

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the design and user experience of 40 virtual museum tours, identifying disparities between user expectations and system behavior, and offers recommendations to improve virtual tour usability and engagement.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive framework for virtual tour components and insights from a usability study, addressing the lack of standardization in virtual museum tour design.

Findings

Significant disparity between user mental models and actual virtual tour systems

Identified key components and characteristics of virtual tours

Provided concrete recommendations for improving user experience

Abstract

The disruption to tourism and travel caused by the COVID-related health crisis highlighted the potential of virtual tourism to provide a universally accessible way to engage in cultural experiences. 360-degree virtual tours, showing a realistic representation of the physical location, enable virtual tourists to experience cultural heritage sites and engage with their collections from the comfort and safety of their home. However, there is no clear standard for the design of such tours and the experience of visitors may vary widely from platform to platform. We first conducted a comprehensive analysis of 40 existing virtual tours, constructing a descriptive framework for understanding the key components and characteristics of virtual tours. Next, we conducted a remote usability study to gain deeper insights into the actual experiences and challenges faced by VT users. Our investigation revealed a significant disparity between users' mental models of virtual tours and the actual system behavior. We discuss these issues and provide concrete recommendations for the creation of better, user-friendly 360-degree virtual tours.