Popular virtual museum applications and user experience: Zeugma Virtual Museum

Virtual museums are able to deliver their works, exhibitions and promotional presentations to wider audiences day by day, thanks to modern communication facilities. Especially during the pandemic process, cultural and artistic activities were carried out through online interfaces due to the restrictions imposed by social isolation. By focusing on museums in the digitalization process, this thesis aims to understand the expectations of visitors and to determine in which direction virtual museums can be developed. After examining the literature on the development of virtual museum technology and applications, the Zeugma Virtual Museum, the world's second largest mosaic museum, which was visited by 1 million people over the internet in 2020, when the pandemic started, was discussed. Questionnaires questioning the relationship between visitors' satisfaction with the virtual museum experience and their post-experience behavior slopes were created and applied to 282 students. Bahçeşehir University Faculty of Architecture and Design Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture and Environmental Design students, Interior Architecture Master's and Doctorate students participated in the research. The data collected with this questionnaire were evaluated with the Structural Equation Model method. According to the results of the field study, it is seen that the class, age, gender factors of the participants do not affect the rate and frequency of virtual museum experience. The majority of the participants are individuals who take the architectural history course and are close to the digital world. According to the data of the pre- and post-Covid period, the majority of the participants; While they stated that they did not visit the virtual museum before, they stated that they always visited the virtual museum afterwards. The most important information quality component that affects the virtual museum experience is content quality, so virtual museums should be developed in terms of their content. After the virtual museum experience, the most satisfied participants are those who are satisfied with learning in the museum. In line with the findings, it is suggested that the language option in virtual museum applications should be diversified and they should be developed to provide shopping services. In summary, online museum technologies should be used to support physical museum visits. Key words: Virtual Museum, Virtual Reality (VR), Structural Equation Model (SEM), Information Quality, User Satisfaction