Analysing narrative engagement with immersive environments: designing audience-centric experiences for cultural heritage learning

Designing audience-centric digital displays can be beneficial for facilitating cultural heritage learning. Using digital technologies, we investigated what would work for twenty-first-century audiences by looking at audience-centricity in terms of personal narratives. The research explored the narrative engagement of audiences after their virtual journey to a Virtual Reality environment titled ‘Sanjiangkou’, an ∼800 year old cultural heritage site in Ningbo, China. We adopted Lambert’s (2013) framework of digital storytelling and used VR technologies for developing the virtual cultural heritage site. A total of 61 participants experienced the virtual journey at the NVIDIA Joint-Lab on Mixed Reality at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Four types of details were extracted from the narratives: Attractive Details, Reflective Details, Connective Details, and Elaborative Details. The article proposes a roadmap for designing audience-centric experiences for qualitative cultural heritage learning, and engaging audiences in the participatory process of the adoption of digital technologies.