Designing Evaluation of Museum Digital Technology for Visitors: A Focus on School Groups

Museums have undergone a tremendous digital transformation, and as they enter their post-digital era, more comprehensive use of digital technology by museums can be expected. An approach to evaluating digital project development on a strategic and sustainable level must therefore be explored. In the meantime, the reconceptualization of the relationship between museums and the public provides a turning point for museums to rethink and adjust their visitor research in order to develop digital technology initiatives for one of their target audiences - school groups - in collaboration with schools to better achieve museums' educational missions.

To obtain a comprehensive understanding of how museums design and develop digital technologies for educational purposes, a systematic evaluation of museum digital technology is proposed. This study focuses on the national science and technology museums in Taiwan, with the aim of exploring the user experience of three museum digital technologies among secondary school students. A user experience questionnaire survey was conducted among 178 students to obtain their feedback on three digital technologies. Additionally, five semi-structured interviews were conducted with museum digital technology developers to identify their design process and potential challenges in digital technology development and evaluation. Lastly, this research employed a Delphi survey, involving a panel of 23 museum staff and 24 schoolteachers, to identify 56 variables and 5 dimensions for evaluating museum digital technology. By utilizing this methodology, this study aimed to provide a comprehensive evaluation of museum digital technology that can inform future design and development efforts.

The research proposes a conceptual tool that integrates a series of experiencerelated, content-related, and design-related elements that are located at three levels subjective, strategic, and sustainable – of developing museum digital technology for school groups. The 3S Museum Digital Technology Evaluation Model incorporates the perspectives of students, schoolteachers, museum employees, and museum digital technology developers with diverse requirements, skills, and prior knowledge, which can play an important role in enabling the development of museum digital technology with a higher quality user experience for school groups.