Virtual Reality in Museum: Exploring the User Experience of Exhibition Narrative

Abstract: The exhibition narrative of traditional museums is “artifact- centered”, while the modern virtual museum is “people- centered”. The paper first analyzes the current typical VR narrative cases, summarizes the relevant elements and basic characteristics of virtual space narrative, and finds that there are many similarities with the narrative methods in traditional movies, but the relationship between storytelling in the virtual world and the audience The interactive relationship is closer. How to attract the audience's attention to the exhibits to enhance the VR exhibition experience is particularly important in the narrative design of virtual exhibitions. As we all know, the audience's line of sight in the three-dimensional space is not restricted because the audience has the freedom to distribute the line of sight.This research first confirmed the categories of points of interest that affect attention through expert interviews, including the physical layer, behavioral layer, and application layer of the VR system. Through 57 questionnaires, the behavioral characteristics, and psychological needs of audience for VR exhibition narratives were collected, Sample analyses were also conducted for this. Taking the design of China's virtual cultural relics exhibition as an example, the author mainly uses clues of points of interest in the design space to guide the audience to focus or distract their attention. During the narrative process of the exhibits, it was discovered that the connections between the points of interest are not isolated but have Continuous. Based on the narrative theory of "story and discourse", 7 points of interest were selected to explore the feasibility of point-of-interest narratives from three aspects: type combination, spatial arrangement, and interaction method. By comparing the attention-guiding effects of two different sets of interest points in linear narratives and non-linear narratives in two testing groups, a contextual correspondence between the audience's attention selection and points of interest was established. Through evaluation tests, we found that narrative methods that use points of interest to guide the audience's attention are feasible. Non-linear narratives have more opportunities than single-line narratives, such as increasing the application of interactive methods that guide the audience's attention. The conclusions have certain implications for the narrative design of VR exhibition.

Keywords: VR Museum, Virtual Exhibition, User Experience, Non-linear Narative

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1004530

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