New Media and Space: An Empirical Study of Learning and Enjoyment Through Museum Hybrid Space

A museum hybrid space combines physical artifacts co-located with virtual and augmented reality displays. Although the technology exists to provide museums with hybrid space, there are no empirical studies on effectiveness of the museum hybrid space in terms of learning and enjoyment. This article takes an experimental approach and measures the enjoyment and learning (dependent variables) of participants in response to selected environments (independent variables) including a traditional environment (based on photos and labels), a video-enhanced environment (based on projected video clips), and a VR-enhanced environment (based on video game). The main outcome of this article is demonstrating that the use of VR technology and the resulting hybrid space (i.e., VR-enhanced environment) results in novel museum experiences that provide greater impacts on audience in terms of learning and enjoyment.