ENHANCING VISITOR WELL-BEING: EXPLORING THE ACTIVITY AND SERVICES DESIGN DIMENSIONS OF IMMERSIVE ART EXPERIENCES

Immersive digital art exhibitions are transforming traditional ways of appreciating art, redefining visitors’ experiences. An immersive digital art experience is described as a unique blend of technology and art that showcases a digital exhibition emphasizing light, sound, and projectors to transform spaces into vivid, multi-angle scenes. A key feature of immersive digital art experiences is the enhancement of complementary activities and services, which have become essential for embodying these art experiences. However, the service and activity aspects of immersive digital art experience design still require attention, highlighting a gap in this area. Thus, this study draws on the concept of embodiment, which emphasizes how additional services and activities can be designed to embody digital art experiences by intertwining with the body, immersive environment, and mind to provide a fulfilling, holistic experience for novel-seeking visitors. This study utilized a mixed-method approach, combining an in-depth interview with conjoint design survey to uncover visitor preferences and perceived delight in proposed design implications. Three themes emerged from interview data: creative activities (e.g., yoga, painting, photobooth), food and beverage services (e.g., wine and coffee) and VR technology enhancements (e.g., virtual tours and gamification). Utilizing a conjoint design, visitor preferences and their perceived delight were assessed to understand their trade-off process in designing an immersive digital art experiencescape for well-being. Selecting coffee experiences to represent the food and beverage services as the primary focus of this study, three art types were designed for the coffee cup presentation: (1) historical/traditional art, (2) contemporary/modern art, and (3) art-theme congruence art. Additionally, three immersion levels were assessed for the design of an immersive digital art environment: (1) fully digital art immersion, (2) partial-digital art immersion, and (3) non-digital art immersion. The results suggest that a contemporary coffee cup design paired with a fully immersive experience is preferred by visitors, with the highest perceived delight. While art-theme congruence and traditional/historical art types ranked second and third, visitors weighted almost equal importance on immersive environmental attributes and tangible presentation attributes, highlighting a focal point for art-embodied experience design. This study positions immersive digital art experiences as the next frontier of hospitality-infused engagement, where service design is no longer a complement but a core part of the artistic experience itself.