Preamble

Exploring Interactive Digital Narratives in Virtual Museum Mini-Programs: A Case Study of the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" Mini-Program

Wang Chaoqun, Chen Qiao
(School of Humanities, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan, Hunan 411201, China)

Abstract

[Purpose] Virtual museums based on mini-program design have become an important platform for cultural heritage display and dissemination. This paper examines the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program as a case study to investigate the application of interactive digital narratives in virtual museums, analyzing how multimedia technologies construct interactive narrative forms to advance digital preservation and inheritance of cultural heritage. [Method] Using literature review and case analysis methods, this study analyzes the application of interactive digital narratives in the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program from perspectives including current application status, design performance, and fundamental characteristics. [Results] Virtual museum mini-programs construct interactive narratives and user participation that permeate both internal and external textual dimensions through innovative interactive digital narrative designs in gaming experiences and audio-visual media, creating immersive experiences across spatial, temporal, and emotional dimensions while facilitating the circulation of story content and cultural experiences across diverse media and platforms. [Conclusion] Future development of interactive digital narratives in virtual museum mini-programs should focus on expanding the scope of narrative subjects, optimizing interactive technologies, and strengthening the spiritual expression of narrative content.

Keywords: Interactive digital narrative; Cultural heritage preservation; Virtual museum mini-program; Digital storytelling
CLC Number: G244
Document Code: A
Article ID: 1671-0134(2025)02-18-07
DOI: 10.19483/j.cnki.11-4653/n.2025.02.002
Citation Format: Wang Chaoqun, Chen Qiao. Exploring Interactive Digital Narratives in Virtual Museum Mini-Programs: A Case Study of the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" Mini-Program [J]. China Media Technology, 2025, 32(2): 18-24.

The Chinese civilization boasts a long and profound history, with cultural artifacts bearing rich historical and cultural heritage. General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized the need to systematically organize traditional cultural resources, bringing to life artifacts confined to palaces, heritage displayed across vast lands, and texts written in ancient books [1]. In 2023, the "Overall Layout Plan for Digital China Construction" issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council explicitly called for the creation of comprehensive digital cultural display platforms. Virtual museums recreate historical artifacts through digital means, breaking temporal and spatial constraints to enable broader and more convenient dissemination [2]. Particularly in the mobile internet era, virtual museums based on mini-program design have emerged as an innovative approach to display and communication. Mini-programs not only offer convenient access but also integrate multimedia, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and other technologies to provide rich interactive experiences and immersive cultural education.

As audience needs evolve, museum display models have shifted from object-centered to human-centered approaches, replacing traditional pathways with thematic routes for information and meaning construction [3]. In virtual museums, interactive digital narratives enable audiences to actively engage with exhibits, explore history, and even reconstruct historical scenes in virtual spaces. This narrative approach features strong interactivity and responsiveness, demonstrating the appeal of non-linear narratives through immersive experiences that hold significant importance for cultural heritage preservation and research.

1. Interactive Digital Narrative Theory and Its Application in Virtual Museum Construction

The emergence and development of interactive digital narrative theory involves the intersection of computer science, literary theory, communication studies, and game studies. Research in this field can be traced back to 2008, when the establishment of the International Society for Interactive Narrative (ISIN) marked the standardization and institutionalization of the discipline, propelling deeper theoretical development. As technology advances, the practical scope of interactive digital narratives has gradually expanded from early interactive texts, films, and games to contemporary applications in cultural heritage preservation and higher education.

1.1 Interactive Digital Narrative Theory

With ongoing digitalization, narratology has increasingly integrated with various media forms, permeating digital media domains including film, hypertext, and games [4]. In the postclassical narratology stage, research focus has shifted from pure text-centered analysis to broader historical and cultural contexts [5]. Leveraging the powerful interactivity provided by computer technology, humans have achieved closer connections with technology, objects, and surrounding environments through interactive interfaces. This connection not only strengthens interactivity but also highlights human agency, thereby advancing the development of interactive digital narratives and opening new pathways for narratological research and application. In Interactive Digital Narrative: History, Theory and Practice, scholars including Hartmut Koenitz divide its evolution into three trajectories: text-based interactive digital narratives (including interactive fiction and hypertext fiction), audio-visual interactive films and series, and experimental forms characterized by complex narrative design (including video games and VR-based games) [6]. Avatars of Story also explores the relationships between narrative and media, and narrative and interactivity, analyzing emerging narrative forms from interactive fiction to AI-supported interactive drama, while comparing the film The Truman Show with the reality show Survivor to demonstrate how stories as meaning forms transform across old and new media [7].

Traditional narrative approaches center on the narrator, emphasizing top-down linear structures, whereas digital technology's "interactivity" and "immersiveness" have gradually replaced plot-centered logic as key narrative elements. Narratees participate indirectly or actively in story creation through virtual means. Marie-Laure Ryan identifies interactivity as the core of interactive digital narratives, noting that in programmed and participatory environments, compelling story elements such as adventure games or interactive narratives stimulate participant agency, making narratives more open and flexible [8]. From the perspective of audience experience, immersion constitutes the core characteristic of interactive digital narratives. Christian Roth and Hartmut Koenitz evaluate user experiences across twelve dimensions including usability and credibility [9]. Ryan further divides "immersive" narrative experiences into narrative immersion and gameplay immersion, with narrative immersion encompassing spatial, temporal, and emotional dimensions [10].

In summary, interactive digital narrative refers to constructing interactive and participatory narrative experiences through digital technologies and multimedia means. Its core characteristics can be summarized as interactivity, immersion, and transmedia properties. Interactivity encompasses various forms of engagement both within and outside the text, granting audiences greater participation and control. Immersion draws audiences into a simulated virtual world through multi-dimensional experiences (emotional, spatial, temporal, etc.), enhancing participation and代入感 (sense of presence). Transmedia characteristics manifest not only in diverse narrative techniques but also in fundamentally reshaping relationships among content, audience, and technology, breaking boundaries of traditional narrative forms. Interactive digital narrative represents not merely formal innovation but also reflects the deep integration of technology, art, and culture, demonstrating new dimensions of storytelling in the digital age.

1.2 Current Application of Interactive Digital Narrative Theory in Virtual Museum Construction

Current applications of interactive digital narrative theory in virtual museum construction primarily manifest as the integration of "digital interactive technologies" with museums, providing participants with high-engagement, cost-effective interactive experiences. "Digital interactive technology" design can be categorized into two types: digital/virtual image interaction and intelligent perception interaction.

Digital and virtual image interaction aims to provide more realistic and stunning visual effects through VR, AR, and 3D modeling technologies. For example, the "Renaissance from the Ashes—Notre-Dame de Paris AR Immersive Exhibition" at the National Museum of China uses AR and 3D technologies to allow users to "walk into" Notre-Dame and experience its history and culture. The "Panoramic Palace Museum" on the Palace Museum's official website employs VR panoramic technology for an immersive visual feast. The Shaanxi History Museum's digital exhibition hall features VR displays on themes such as "Treasures of the Tang Dynasty" and "Collection of Tang Dynasty Murals." These technologies not only enhance the visual depth of exhibits but also enable immersive interaction between audiences and exhibits in virtual environments.

Intelligent perception interaction encompasses voice interaction, haptic interaction, and motion sensing, incorporating audiences' physiological, physical, and psychological factors into design considerations to realize exhibit-audience interaction. The Shanghai Museum, for instance, features voice guide functionality in its official WeChat mini-program, where audiences can speak exhibit names or numbers to receive detailed audio explanations. The Hong Kong Museum of History uses haptic interactive devices to display traditional handicrafts, allowing audiences to touch screens to view Cantonese embroidery details and watch animated demonstrations of stitching techniques, enhancing intuitive cognition and experience. At the American Museum of Natural History, audiences interact with virtual dinosaur environments through body movements—jumping may trigger a pterosaur flying overhead.

1.3 Unique Advantages of Virtual Museum Mini-Programs in Interactive Digital Narrative Application

With the proliferation of mobile internet and smartphones, virtual museum mini-programs have emerged as novel digital platforms. Leveraging their lightweight, convenient, and social attributes, they are becoming new carriers for virtual museums. Mini-program platforms can not only inherit existing interactive design technologies from virtual museums but also demonstrate unique advantages in application innovation when combined with interactive digital narratives.

1.3.1 Balancing Convenient Access and Personalized Experience

A signature feature of mini-programs is "use upon opening," eliminating cumbersome download and installation processes—users can simply scan QR codes or search to access them. This convenience significantly lowers usage barriers, aligning with modern society's demand for instant information access. According to the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), individual technology acceptance is primarily influenced by "perceived ease of use" and "perceived usefulness." In the context of virtual museum mini-programs, this convenient access characteristic satisfies contemporary society's urgent need for rapid, convenient information acquisition, thereby reducing perceived costs during usage and enhancing initial acceptance willingness. While meeting convenient access needs, virtual museum mini-programs can develop personalized modes based on user autonomy. The mini-program homepage features multiple cultural theme sections, allowing users to click into specific sections according to their interests. The mini-program then provides deeper, more diverse interactive activities tailored to the selected sections, enabling users to engage in profound cultural experiences and interactive learning within their areas of interest. This approach enhances user engagement and satisfaction while strengthening usage stickiness with the virtual museum mini-program.

1.3.2 Lightweight Design and Efficient Integration of Multimedia Forms

Compared to traditional virtual museum websites, mini-programs typically feature more streamlined and lightweight interaction design, pursuing simplicity and fluidity in interface design to accommodate mobile operation convenience. This simplified design enables audiences to quickly locate exhibits of interest and directly participate in interactions without being distracted by complicated content or complex interfaces. Interactive digital narratives typically involve the integration of multiple media forms (text, images, video, audio, etc.) to construct complete story contexts. As a lightweight platform, mini-programs demonstrate exceptional flexibility in integrating these cross-media elements, delivering rich multimedia interactive experiences. For instance, users can not only browse high-definition exhibit images but also obtain multi-dimensional information through short videos and voice commentaries. The mini-program's streamlined architecture enables rapid content loading and interface display, reducing cumbersome page transitions and complex loading processes common in traditional virtual museum websites, ensuring fluidity and immediacy in interactive narratives. This efficient performance allows mini-programs to maintain content richness while delivering smooth user experiences in interactive digital narratives.

1.3.3 Social Sharing Functions Expanding Narrative Extensibility

Traditional digital museums often focus on professional curation with information transmission as the primary mode. Mini-programs, relying on social platforms like WeChat and Douyin, provide multi-dimensional and extensible experiences for interactive digital narratives. After visiting virtual museums, users can share their photographed virtual exhibits or visit reflections through mini-programs, participating in online discussions and challenge activities centered on exhibit themes. Through social networks' information diffusion effects, this triggers online discussions around exhibit themes, creating widespread interactive effects. During sharing and participation, users continuously deepen their cognition and understanding of exhibits, integrating their emotions, thoughts, and cultural insights, transforming exhibits from isolated cultural symbols into carriers of user emotion and digital interaction. This strengthened emotional connection further motivates users to actively integrate into the interactive digital narrative system, becoming indispensable organic components of the narrative chain. User-generated content (UGC)—whether discussion viewpoints, creative stories, or challenge outcomes—forms dynamic, continuously evolving narrative branches within social platforms' communication networks, greatly enriching the relatively fixed narrative content of virtual museums and enhancing narrative diversity and extensibility.

2. Design Performance of Interactive Digital Narrative Thinking in the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" Virtual Museum Mini-Program

General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Protecting the Mogao Caves well and inheriting Dunhuang culture well is a responsibility the Chinese nation should bear for the progress of world civilization." In this context, the Dunhuang Research Institute, in collaboration with People's Daily New Media and Tencent, launched the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program—the first integrated platform for exploring, touring, and protecting Dunhuang grotto art. Its digital construction employs extensive multimedia technologies, integrating diverse forms of expression including text, images, and sound while incorporating human interactive behaviors to create a multi-dimensional, highly participatory cultural narrative space. As of October 2024, the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" WeChat mini-program has attracted over 200 million online interactions, becoming an important digital platform for promoting Dunhuang culture and advancing cultural heritage preservation. Its interactive digital narrative thinking manifests in two specific design types.

2.1 Game-Based Interactive Narrative Design

The core characteristic of games lies in players driving story development through choices, actions, and decisions, making each player's story experience unique and profound. The game design in the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program can be divided into two categories: immersive deep-interaction games based on non-linear narratives, and lightweight interactive games aimed at enhancing user experience and personalized participation.

The "Digital Library Cave" represents a deep-interaction game based on non-linear narrative, combining high-definition scanning technology and game engine physical rendering to achieve 1:1 replication of the library cave and its artifacts in the game world. Players assume different roles, traveling back to historical periods including the late Tang and Northern Song dynasties to personally experience the development of the library cave. Through designs featuring free exploration, game interaction, complex narratives, and cross-temporal immersion, players gain deep understanding of Dunhuang culture and history, stimulating interest in the Mogao Caves.

In contrast, lightweight interactive games primarily enhance user engagement and personalized experience through simple, interesting interaction forms. These games typically avoid complex plots, instead enabling easy participation and unique experiences through simple operations and choices. For example, in the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang Animated Drama" section, users can freely select Dunhuang animated dramas and dub mural stories. The "Dunhuang Seasonal Solar Terms" feature allows users to select their birth dates to generate corresponding Dunhuang seasonal backgrounds and images, helping users understand related traditional festivals, customs, and Dunhuang art. "Lighting Up the Mogao Caves" utilizes digital and blockchain technologies to allow users to online recreate the millennium-old tradition of lighting lamps at the Mogao Caves, experiencing the history and inheritance of Dunhuang culture.

2.2 Audio-Visual Image-Based Interactive Narrative Design

Interactive narrative design using images as carriers typically combines visual imagery, sound, and animation as narrative media, creating entirely new narrative experiences through audio-visual integration, free choice, and emotional interaction. In mini-program usage, users can personally select narrative images, temporal-spatial settings, and segments.

The "Seeking Dunhuang's Realm" section employs 360-degree panoramic technology to achieve 1:1 high-precision three-dimensional restoration of Cave 285, providing an immersive virtual visit experience. In the online version, users can freely explore the cave, browse mural stories, and understand the cave's cultural connotations. After entering "Seeking Dunhuang's Realm," users first learn about Cave 285's background through short films, then interactively click "light the lamp" to enter the cave for virtual tours. The entire experience centers on the theme of "goodness," divided into four chapters: Believing in Goodness, Encouraging Goodness, Aspiring to Goodness, and Symphony of Civilizations. Each chapter drives users to deeply understand stories behind Dunhuang murals through different interactive designs. For instance, in Chapter Two "Encouraging Goodness," users learn the story of "Five Hundred Robbers Becoming Buddhas" by "clicking on immortal grass to scatter good-will medicine." Chapter Four "Symphony of Civilizations" allows users to click on different religious deity patterns in murals to light up musical scores and play ethnic instruments including pipa, suona, and drums, conveying the cultural connotations of Cave 285 and the significance of multicultural fusion through multi-sensory audio-visual experiences of different religious, ethnic, and regional artistic styles. After completing chapters, users can independently click on mural details for visits, and after lighting up ten mural details, they can share their interactions.

3. Fundamental Characteristics of Interactive Digital Narratives in the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" Virtual Museum Mini-Program

As a representative of digital platform construction, virtual museum mini-programs also represent the latest stage of interactive digital narrative theory in practice. They not only inherit traditional museum display functions but also make interactions between exhibits and audiences more multi-dimensional and expressive through digital means. The following analysis of the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program's functions is based on three core characteristics of interactive digital narrative theory: interactivity, immersion, and transmedia properties.

3.1 Interactivity: Constructing Interactive Narratives and User Participation Across Internal and External Texts

In digital museum interactive narratives, enhancing interactive participation with users represents the ultimate goal throughout the entire digital museum's interactive storytelling process. Users actively integrate into and experience the virtual museum's narrative progression through partial or complete participation. The "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program attracts user participation through multi-level interactive designs both within and outside texts.

3.1.1 Intra-Text Interactivity: Deepening Content Immersion

Text design in interactive digital narrative-based virtual museums aims to construct "cohesive narratives" that ensure narrative complexity and realism while helping users deeply understand narrative events' content and significance. Narrative games represent the latest application stage of interactive digital narrative development, with three primary interactive narrative modes in game design: embedded narrative, responsive narrative, and node-based narrative [11]. Embedded narrative integrates story backgrounds into user interactions for discovery without user intervention. Responsive narrative emphasizes dynamic changes, adjusting story directions in real-time based on user behavior. Node-based narrative, positioned between the two, refers to story development pushed forward through multiple nodes, with users driving stories in different directions through different nodes.

The interactive narrative structure of "Digital Library Cave" in "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" primarily employs node-based narrative supplemented by embedded narrative. Upon entering the game, players can choose three main lines for exploration: Line S1 browses artifact exhibitions and collects knowledge points; Line S3 explores cave artifacts to understand culture; and Line S2 serves as the main interactive narrative line, unfolding around library cave history through node-based narrative across four chapters: "Cave of the Monk Commander," "Birth of Wine," "Century-Long Sealing," and "Scourge of Artifacts," using the Tang, Song, and Qing dynasties as historical threads. The game features 15 interactive points and 6 interactive games, with each chapter containing at least 3 interactive points and one interactive game. These interactive elements are embedded with historical knowledge, forming sufficient interaction between users and narrative texts. For instance, at game point TG2, when users carve cave walls, they must operate from top to bottom following realistic carving sequences. This interactive design not only increases趣味性 (fun) but also helps players understand the library cave's history and culture through practice. As the game progresses, players gradually connect story pieces to understand the library cave's past and present. From a knowledge construction perspective, repeated interaction with the text achieves highly participatory experiences and strengthens users' accumulation of library cave knowledge, subtly influencing their cognition [FIGURE:1].

3.1.2 Extra-Text Interactivity: Strengthening User Social Connections

Beyond intra-text interactive design, the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program emphasizes interactions between users and the virtual museum system itself, other users, and the platform. The "Today's Words" feature recommends a Dunhuang mural, related story, and classic aphorism daily, allowing users to interact with others through comments, likes, and shares, continuously updating cultural content while increasing extra-text interaction. Additionally, after completing the full Digital Library Cave experience, QR codes are generated for sharing, awarding users the title "Cultural Relic Rescuer" and displaying cumulative user travel years, unlocked scenes, and collected knowledge cards, enhancing user belonging and encouraging achievement sharing with others. On Weibo, the #CloudTourDunhuang topic has reached 120 million views, with numerous secondary creation videos on Bilibili. Introducing social elements outside narrative texts allows users to interact with others and establish emotional connections while participating in narratives. This emotional sharing and dissemination is particularly crucial in cultural entertainment products, deepening users' identification with narrative texts while driving cultural dissemination and strengthening overall cultural experience through group interactions.

3.2 Immersion: Creating Three-Dimensional Immersive Experiences Across Space, Time, and Emotion

In the development of interactive digital narrative theory, immersion plays a vital role, not only enhancing user engagement and experience quality but also profoundly influencing story dissemination effects and emotional resonance. Based on Ryan's classification of immersion types, the following analysis of "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" examines spatial immersion, temporal immersion, and emotional immersion.

3.2.1 Spatial Immersion: Enhancing Sense of Place

Narrative spatial immersion refers to users' identification with the geographical space presented in narrative texts within virtual spaces, achieving a sense of being physically present. Sense of place serves as the emotional bond between users and texts, generating place attachment and spatial immersion through place identification. Spatial immersion is primarily achieved through three design aspects. First is realistic spatial simulation: during the collection and restoration phase, "Digital Library Cave" uses high-definition digital photogrammetry and 3D modeling to achieve millimeter-level 1:1 high-precision digital twins of cultural heritage in the virtual world. Additionally, the historical environment and ecological background of the Mogao Caves have been restored. In terms of sound effects, on-site sounds including bells, wind, and echoes from the Mogao Caves have been recorded, with ancient Dunhuang melodies as the main theme to recreate authentic ancient Mogao Cave scenes. Second is user dynamic interaction: users can freely walk, explore, and interact in the Digital Library Cave, gaining greater spatial control and actively participating in narrative processes by triggering plots and participating in historical events (such as cave carving and sutra copying tasks). Third is cultural environment design: a well-constructed virtual space is often combined with cultural contexts, providing richer emotional experiences by embedding specific cultural symbols and narrative clues in the space. For example, the lost "Guiyi Juntufu Jiupoli" (Wine Breaking Record of the Guiyi Army Government) was divided into three sections, with the middle and end sections scattered in Japan and France. Through the artifact's tumultuous life journey, users not only understand its historical value but also emotionally resonate with the place, stimulating place attachment and cultural confidence.

3.2.2 Temporal Immersion: Enhancing Participation

The "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program achieves temporal immersion through dual temporal logic, referring to the time of story unfolding and the time of story reading—namely, narrative design of story time and extension of user gameplay time [12]. Story time narrative design allows users to perceive temporal flow through historical "time travel." In "Digital Library Cave," users can not only read or watch stories but also travel back to different historical periods including late Tang, Northern Song, and late Qing dynasties to personally experience the creation, sealing, rediscovery, loss, and reunion of library cave artifacts. During exploration, users continuously "return to the past," experiencing the transformation of Dunhuang cultural heritage to gain more profound historical and temporal flow experiences. On the other hand, extending user experience time further strengthens temporal immersion. The mini-program's narrative structure combines node-based and linear narratives, ensuring story coherence while stimulating users' exploratory desires through hierarchical game design. As each puzzle is solved and task completed—such as collecting pigments in the library cave or answering questions through observing details in "Sound and Animated Language"—users not only gradually deepen storylines but also gain in-depth knowledge about Dunhuang artifacts and history. The intertwining of gameplay time and story time allows users to simultaneously experience both historical narratives of cultural heritage and personal immersive experiences, enabling them to experience Dunhuang culture's inheritance and transformation through temporal flow, thus achieving richer and more profound temporal immersion.

3.2.3 Emotional Immersion: Strengthening Cultural Identity

According to pretend play theory, emotional immersion is divided into self-oriented and other-oriented emotions. In the Digital Library Cave story experience, users participate in text narratives as peripheral story characters, helping NPCs (non-player characters) like Master Hongbian carve caves, pavilion monks copy the Diamond Sutra, assisting monks in sealing the library cave, and finally witnessing personally preserved artifacts being plundered by multiple countries until today's digital presentation of the "Wine Breaking Record." In terms of self-oriented emotions, users undergo emotional changes from curiosity to regret to hopefulness. Personal emotional investment strengthens users' identification with cultural relic protection and cultural renaissance, fostering deeper understanding of China's long history and national identity. Other-oriented emotions primarily include emotions generated toward NPCs in the "Digital Library Cave" story and emotions arising from sharing and communication with others. During exploration, users can sense Master Hongbian and his disciples' dedication to protecting Dunhuang culture, investing emotions in NPCs that influence overall story emotional identification. Resonance and reflection after sharing and exchanging "Digital Library Cave" gameplay experiences with others can stimulate resonance among audiences and connections to external emotions, generating emotional immersion.

3.3 Transmedia: Facilitating Circulation of Story Content and Cultural Experiences Across Diverse Media and Platforms

Transmedia narrative emphasizes content expansion and extension across different media, enabling story content to flow and develop across multiple platforms and forms, enriching user participation and experience. This analysis examines two aspects of the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program's transmedia characteristics.

3.3.1 Complementary Media Forms Enriching Content Diversity

Complementary and integrated media forms refer to combining different media—text, images, audio, video, virtual reality, etc.—to compensate for limitations of single media. The "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program collects and displays extensive artifact information from the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. Since murals and sculptures themselves carry substantial artistic information, the mini-program combines images and text in the "Explore" section, categorized by "art form," "dynasty," and "color," while integrating audio and video through a "Video" column showing the development history and international dissemination of the Dunhuang Mogao Caves, providing more intuitive and vivid perspectives. In the "New Cultural Creativity" section, interactive elements are incorporated through columns like "Sound and Animated Language" and "Cloud Tour Dunhuang Animated Drama" to increase user participation and motivation, enhancing content understanding and memory through interactive games rather than superficial knowledge points. The "Seeking Dunhuang's Realm" and "Digital Library Cave" columns in the "New Cultural Creativity" section combine more complex VR, AR, 3D modeling, and cloud gaming technologies based on the aforementioned content. Through comprehensive application of sophisticated technologies, digital content is integrated with users' real worlds, providing more vivid and participatory cultural experiences.

3.3.2 Extended Media Narratives Enabling Multi-Dimensional Cultural Experiences

Extending and expanding narrative texts across different media and platforms can effectively enrich narrative content, enhance user participation, and achieve more multi-dimensional cultural experiences. The "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" mini-program provides immersive cultural experiences on mobile devices while extending to PC and other platforms. Through social sharing functions, users can disseminate content of interest to broader social networks, promoting cultural content dissemination and interaction. Additionally, the mini-program enables online-offline transmedia interaction. In the "Explore" section, users can mark murals or sculptures of interest as "want to visit," guiding them to focus on relevant works during physical visits and enhancing visit targeting and depth. During on-site visits, users can also use the "Flip Card" function to quickly obtain background knowledge of frequently-told stories or allusions, filling gaps in immediate information common in traditional visit experiences. This online-offline interactive participation allows narrative content to transcend single-platform limitations, enabling users to deepen their understanding of Dunhuang culture from different angles and levels, experiencing and cognizing multi-dimensionally across multiple platforms and media.

4. Construction Effects and Improvement Strategies for Virtual Museum Mini-Programs Under Interactive Digital Narratives

Supported by interactive digital narrative theory, virtual museum mini-programs are revolutionizing cultural heritage display and dissemination methods, providing users with highly personalized and immersive cultural experiences. However, their integration remains in the preliminary stage, with many dimensions warranting further deepening and exploration.

4.1 Construction Effects of Virtual Museum Mini-Programs Under Interactive Digital Narratives

As efficient and convenient digital display tools, virtual museum mini-programs under interactive digital narratives provide audiences with more personalized and immersive cultural experiences, stimulating interest and exploration desires for cultural heritage. Through this innovative interaction model, virtual museum mini-programs not only promote active knowledge acquisition but also deepen audiences' understanding and perception of cultural connotations, driving broader cultural dissemination.

4.1.1 Enhanced Interactive Experiences and Increased User Participation

A core objective of virtual museums is enhancing museum attractiveness through interactive experiences to promote user participation. Traditional museums often employ one-way information transmission models, introducing artifacts and history to on-site visitors through exhibition boards and audio guides. Virtual museums, by contrast, allow users to actively participate during exhibitions, selecting topics or exhibits of interest for in-depth exploration. For example, the "Cloud Tour Dunhuang" main interface is divided into functions including "Explore," "Tour," "Protect," and "New Cultural Creativity," with this highly free exploration approach greatly enhancing user interest and engagement, transforming them from passive "information receivers" to "active participants." This interactive experience extends beyond simple exhibit browsing to multi-level interactions between users and museum content through various interactive means (virtual tours, information clicking, situational experiences, etc.), establishing deeper emotional connections. Furthermore, lightweight mini-programs can provide round-the-clock, uninterrupted services, with this high accessibility better suited to today's fast-paced lifestyle and attracting younger digital natives.

4.1.2 Enriched Museum Content and Sustainable Development

Through digital and virtual technologies, virtual museum mini-programs can overcome traditional museums' limitations of physical space and exhibits, transforming vast precious historical and cultural resources into online accessible content. Beyond displaying physical museum collections, they can present artifacts and sites that cannot be exhibited due to preservation or space constraints, expanding museum display boundaries. Simultaneously, virtual museums can create more imaginative and creative display forms, such as overlaying AR technology to recreate historical scenes on mobile phones, like the dynamic display of Dunhuang murals in "Cloud Tour Dunhuang," or enhancing exhibit-audience interactivity through interactive stories featuring role-playing or virtual scene reconstruction. To ensure sustainable development, virtual museums rely not only on rich collection resources but also regularly launch virtual exhibitions and activities timed with festivals and anniversaries, enriching museum content while effectively attracting and maintaining users and enhancing virtual museum vitality and appeal, as exemplified by "Dunhuang Seasonal Solar Terms" and "Lighting Up the Mogao Caves" features.

4.1.3 Deepened Social Education and Cultural Dissemination

Virtual museum mini-programs provide more convenient learning pathways for students in remote areas. Traditional cultural heritage education often relies on offline teaching limited by geographical location, facilities, and resource allocation, making it difficult for remote area students to access cultural heritage resources. Virtual museums overcome spatial constraints through digital means, enabling remote area students to access, explore, and learn cultural heritage anytime, anywhere via the internet. Students can participate in learning through interactive engagement and immersive experiences rather than being limited to traditional "seeing" and "listening," thereby enhancing learning participation and motivation. This virtual learning platform not only provides knowledge acquisition opportunities but also creates a richer and more diverse learning environment, helping stimulate interest in history and culture while strengthening cultural identity and confidence. Additionally, virtual museum mini-programs break geographical and temporal constraints, forming a digital interconnected system based on shared services and external dissemination, enabling global audiences to access and deeply understand the charm of Chinese culture and art across geographical boundaries, thereby effectively enhancing the international influence and global dissemination of Chinese culture.

4.2 Improvement Strategies for Virtual Museum Mini-Programs Under Interactive Digital Narratives

Current integration between virtual museums and interactive digital narratives has initially matured, demonstrating enormous potential in cultural heritage curation and dissemination. As technology advances and user needs evolve, this integration can be further improved and deepened, opening broader spaces for digital cultural innovation development.

4.2.1 Diversified Expansion of Narrative Subject Scope

As one of the main subjects of interactive digital narratives, audiences can influence and shape narrative content. Program design can introduce different cultural backgrounds and professional identities, encouraging audiences to interpret exhibits or themes from their own perspectives and providing richer information experiences. Beyond in-program interactive experiences, embodied experiences should be expanded, motivating users to participate in creative activities such as writing artifact stories and character design through social media and creation platforms, leveraging user-generated content (UGC) secondary creation capabilities to drive cultural recreation. Furthermore, cross-disciplinary cooperation can provide more accurate and rich cultural interpretations for exhibition content, making virtual museum displays not only academic but also forming diverse interactive cultural experiences at artistic and creative levels. Digital narrative training workshops and cultural heritage creativity workshops, such as those organized by UNESCO, can help cultural heritage protectors, museum practitioners, artists, and educators worldwide master digital narrative technologies. However, when expanding narrative subject boundaries, attention must be paid to content integration and accuracy to avoid information fragmentation affecting audiences' overall understanding of museum culture.

4.2.2 Optimizing the Depth of Interactive Technology Application

Technology serves as an important driving force for the continuous development of interactive digital theory, determining the depth and breadth of narrative structures, forms, interaction modes, and user experiences. Current technology trends are evolving toward humanization, intelligence, and immersion, enabling audiences to interact with exhibits in natural, simple ways within virtual environments, forming a ubiquitous interaction model that is "formless yet omnipresent, tangible yet naturally harmonious" [14]. However, in the actual gameplay experience of Digital Library Cave, optimization is still needed, as some scenes lack free interactive exploration, task systems remain predominantly single-linear, and personalized interactive experiences are not yet fully developed. By introducing AIGC technology, higher levels of personalization and diversity can be achieved in automated narrative text generation, helping users conduct more autonomous exploration and interaction in virtual worlds and injecting more intelligent elements into virtual museum mini-program interactive experiences. For example, using text-to-video large models to automatically generate historical scenes related to exhibits helps users better understand historical content, improving experience quality while reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

4.2.3 Strengthening Cultural and Spiritual Expression in Narrative Content

The design concept of interactive digital narratives should not be limited to entertainment and user attraction but, more importantly, should create deep emotional resonance and strengthen cultural identity. Currently, many virtual museum mini-program designs tend to overemphasize visual presentation of exhibits, using high-definition images, virtual tours, and other technologies to provide immersive exhibition experiences. However, their story plot designs and interactive gameplay often remain at the surface level of "material display," lacking profound interpretation of the cultural spirit behind exhibits. Cultural spirit represents the "soul" of cultural heritage and constitutes the design core of interactive digital narratives in virtual museum mini-programs. The combination of interactive digital narratives and artifacts should not be viewed merely as an exhibit display task but as a process for transmitting traditional Chinese cultural spirit, thoughts, and values. Therefore, when designing interactive digital narrative works, cultural backgrounds must be thoroughly explored before narrative text creation, with careful consideration given to cultural symbols, language design, narrative structures, and cultural thinking elements. This allows users to subtly receive and understand the cultural spirit and values embedded within during interaction with narrative texts, achieving more profound and lasting cultural transmission effects that help them realize cultural identity and value thinking through interaction.

As a new method in the digital era integrating multi-disciplinary advantages, interactive digital narrative applied to virtual museum mini-program design can not only achieve digital immortality of cultural heritage but also extract and reconstruct the core spirit and cultural connotations of artifacts, endowing them with new expressive forms and vitality. Furthermore, through multi-dimensional interactive design, deep links between users and cultural heritage are achieved, driving secondary creation and dissemination of cultural heritage. However, in practical applications, attention must be paid to cultural and spiritual expression in narrative content, breaking away from traditional narrative thinking, expanding narrative subjects, and simultaneously using artificial intelligence to optimize interactive design for more personalized user experiences. In the future, as technology continues to develop, interactive digital narratives will unleash greater potential in virtual museums, contributing to the dissemination of Chinese culture and promoting global cultural exchange and integration.

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Author Information: Wang Chaoqun (1982—), female, from Chenzhou, Hunan, Associate Professor at the School of Humanities, Hunan University of Science and Technology, research direction: media management; Chen Qiao (2000—), female, from Hengyang, Hunan, Master's student in Journalism and Communication at the School of Humanities, Hunan University of Science and Technology, research direction: media management.
(Responsible Editor: Li Jing)