Flowing Line: A New Proposal of Visual Guidance Considering FoMO and Flow in Virtual Museums

Background In traditional art museums, designers use various visual guidance strategies to direct visitors, optimizing their experiences in alignment with the artist ’ s vision and exhibition ’ s design. These strategies include exhibit placement, graphic design, and lighting. However, as virtual exhibitions grow in popularity, there ’ s a notable lack of studies on visual guidance within virtual museums. Methods In our study, 31 participants(17 males and 14 females) engaged with a virtual art museum through a display monitor, responding to various visual guidance stimuli, including fixed lines, fixed arrows, pointing arrows, and flying butterflies. These stimuli fell into two categories: World-referenced stimuli, which were centered on the user ’ s environment, and Screen-referenced stimuli, designed around the user ’ s display screen. Upon exploring the virtual museum, participants then completed a questionnaire probing their experiences of fear of missing out(FoMO), their reactions to the visual guidance(Visual Guidance Questionnaire, or VGQ), and their sense of flow or engagement with the exhibit. To analyze the gathered data, we employed the RM MANOVA, allowing us to empirically evaluate these constructs. Results In a comparative analysis of comparative analysis of methods to visual guidance in a virtual art museum, we found that: 1)The distinction between world-referenced methods of visual guidance, centered on the user ’ s perspective, and screen-referenced methods did not show a significant correlation with VGQ, FoMO, or Flow. 2)A comparison of the four methods of visual guidance showed significant differences in VGQ, FoMO, and Flow. For FoMO, participants felt less guided by a ‘ fixed line ’ compared to a ‘ pointing arrow ’ and ‘ butterfly ’ (F= 8.31). For Flow, the score was higher when using the ‘ fixed line ’ than the ‘ pointing arrow ’ and ‘ butterfly ’ (F= 5.38). Lastly, the VGQ results showed that using the ‘ fixed line ’ received significantly higher scores compared to the ‘ pointing arrow ’ and ‘ butterfly ’ , and the ‘ fixed arrow ’ also received a significantly high score(F= 18.8). These results indicated that the way visual guidance in a virtual art museum affects the user ’ s experience in the museum, preventing them from becoming lost and allowing them to immerse themselves in the artwork. Moreover, the ‘ fixed line ’ method of guiding attention was found to be the most positive for experiencing the virtual art museum. Conclusions Based on the experimental results, our study proposes a new ‘ flowing line ’ visual guidance method for path guidance in virtual art museums. The ‘ flowing line ’ offers intuitive understanding of navigation without requiring users to interpret graphics or text, unlike traditional signage or maps used in virtual art galleries. It also represents the sequence of the exhibition through the flow of gradients, enabling sequential navigation and compensating for the shortcomings of the ‘ fixed line on the floor ’ . Furthermore, The ‘ flowing line ’ is less forceful than the arrows traditionally used in visual guidance, and seamlessly integrates into the art museum without disrupting the appreciation of artwork. These findings provide foundational data that can be utilized in future virtual art museum planning, suggesting ways to enhance user ’ s art experiences by implementing efficient path guidance through visual guidance.