Interaction Design Methods for Data-Intelligent Museum Exhibitions: An Embodied Cognition Perspective

Husheng PAN^1*Cuiting KONG²Lie ZHANG³

• ¹Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China
• ²Yunnan Arts University, Kunming, China
• ³Tsinghua University Academy of Arts and Design, Beijing, China

Addressing current practical challenges in exhibitions in the data-intelligent era—such as an overemphasis on form over content and insufficient emotional resonance—as well as the lack of a systematic theoretical framework to guide practice, this paper draws on embodied cognition and dynamical systems theory to explore the internal mechanisms of interaction design for museum exhibitions in the data-intelligent era from the perspective of cognitive generation. It identifies four core elements of such interaction design, namely the Body Perception Layer, the Body Action Layer, the Environmental Construction Layer and the Meaning Construction Layer, and on this basis constructs a cyclic embodied interaction design framework for museums (the PCAE model) that reveals the dynamic flow of information between visitors and the data-intelligent exhibition environment. Using the data-intelligent interactive exhibit "Dialogue With the Master" at the Confucius Museum in China as a case study, the paper further validates the feasibility and scientific soundness of the proposed framework. This framework introduces a new embodied cross-disciplinary theoretical perspective for research on interaction design in museums in the data-intelligent era and provides an operational design tool that offers designers a clear guiding pathway for optimizing interactive experiences, thereby holding substantial practical value for design practice and theoretical exploration.