A Study on the Association between Interface Usability and Visit Intention of the Digital Museum of the Forbidden City: Design Analysis Based on Heuristic Evaluation

Qingyi Deng; Khayril Anwar Bin Khairudin; Gufeng Wu

doi:10.62177/jetp.v2i4.935

Authors

Qingyi Deng Guangzhou Huali College
Khayril Anwar Bin Khairudin Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)
Gufeng Wu Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.62177/jetp.v2i4.935

Keywords:

Digital Palace, Interface Usability, Heuristic Evaluation, Task Walkthrough, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Intention to Access

Abstract

This study, based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as the explanatory framework, focuses on how the interface usability of the Digital Palace Mini Program (mobile version) affects the intention to access through the user experience mechanism. A purely qualitative design analysis was conducted using heuristic evaluation and task walkthroughs. The study selected five key pages (such as navigation, routes, etc.) and six typical task paths to construct an evidence chain, systematically identifying and summarizing the types of interface issues. The research reveals that usability issues mainly fall into five categories: information architecture and labels, visibility of navigation and paths, search and discoverability, feedback and error tolerance, readability, consistency, and accessibility. These problems tend to be magnified in continuous task chains by increasing cognitive load and uncertainty, weakening control and trust, thereby reducing perceived ease of use (PEOU), and further affecting content acquisition efficiency and perceived usefulness (PU), thus suppressing the tendency for continuous visits and returns. Based on evidence-based discovery, this paper proposes executable optimization suggestions for the interface of digital museums, providing design references for enhancing the accessibility and continuous usage of digital cultural heritage platforms for the public.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Parry, R. (2007). Recoding the museum: Digital heritage and the technologies of change. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203347485

Marty, P. F. (2008). Museum websites and museum visitors: Digital museum resources and their use. Museum Management and Curatorship, 23(1), 81–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/09647770701865410

Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319–340. https://doi.org/10.2307/249008

Nielsen, J., & Molich, R. (1990). Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’90) (pp. 249–256). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/97243.97281

Nielsen, J. (1994). Heuristic evaluation. In J. Nielsen & R. L. Mack (Eds.), Usability inspection methods (pp. 25–62). John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.5555/189200.189209

Wharton, C., Rieman, J., Lewis, C., & Polson, P. (1994). The cognitive walkthrough method: A practitioner’s guide. In J. Nielsen & R. L. Mack (Eds.), Usability inspection methods (pp. 105–140). John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.5555/189200.189214

Venkatesh, V., & Davis, F. D. (2000). A theoretical extension of the technology acceptance model: Four longitudinal field studies. Management Science, 46(2), 186–204. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.46.2.186.11926

Kabassi, K. (2017). Evaluating websites of museums: State of the art. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 24, 184–196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.culher.2016.10.016

Cunliffe, D., Kritou, E., & Tudhope, D. (2001). Usability evaluation for museum web sites. Museum Management and Curatorship, 19(3), 229–252. https://doi.org/10.1080/09647770100201903

Sylaiou, S., Killintzis, V., Paliokas, I., Mania, K., & Patias, P. (2014). Usability evaluation of virtual museums’ interfaces visualization technologies. In R. Shumaker & S. Lackey (Eds.), Virtual, augmented and mixed reality: Applications of virtual and augmented reality (pp. 124–133). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07464-1_12

Cordón Benito, D., & Maestro Espínola, L. (2017). Museums’ corporate websites as tools for transparency. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 72, 941–956. https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2017-1200-51en

World Wide Web Consortium. (2023, October 5). WCAG 2.2 is a Web Standard “W3C Recommendation” . Web Accessibility Initiative. https://www.w3.org/WAI/news/2023-10-05/wcag22rec/

Zheng, F., Wu, S., Liu, R., & Bai, Y. (2024). What influences user continuous intention of digital museum: Integrating task-technology fit (TTF) and unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT) models. Heritage Science, 12, Article 253. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-024-01365-4

International Organization for Standardization. (2018). ISO 9241-11:2018 Ergonomics of human-system interaction — Part 11: Usability: Definitions and concepts. ISO. https://www.iso.org/standard/63500.html

Maxwell, J. A. (2013). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Hassenzahl, M. (2008). User experience (UX): Towards an experiential perspective on product quality. In Proceedings of the 20th Conference on l’Interaction Homme-Machine (pp. 11–15). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/1512714.1512717

Nowell, L. S., Norris, J. M., White, D. E., & Moules, N. J. (2017). Thematic analysis: Striving to meet the trustworthiness criteria. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406917733847