## 3 Methods  
### Research Design  
Before answering the questionnaire, each participant engaged in a between-subjects experiment. The experimental design included two virtual museum map experience conditions: Condition A (as shown in the top left of Figure 2) did not utilize mini-map navigation, and participants navigated through designated links [94]. Condition B (as shown in the top right of Figure 2) featured mini-map guidance, with participants experiencing it through an outsourced experimental test package. Both conditions utilized the Anhui Museum's online virtual exhibition hall, which predominantly features ancient artifacts, with Condition B adding a mini-map to the setup of Condition A.  
Figure 1: The conceptual model in this study.  
The experimental design was a one-way control experiment, comprising two conditions of virtual museum map experiences: one without mini-map navigation and the other with mini-map navigation. The mini-map, based on the eight different game mini-map features summarized by [PERSON] et al. [87], integrated three types of stimuli: visual, interactive, and informational. Specifically, visual stimuli included shape (rectangular mini-map shape), position (mini-map positioned in the upper right corner of the user interface), centering (centered around the world), projection (top-down view), base layers (transparent base layer), and proportions (3.1-4% of the entire display screen); interactive stimuli included orientation (no rotation of the mini-map relative to the museum environment); informational stimuli included additional navigation elements (names or other artifact information), as shown in the top right, bottom left, and bottom right of Figure 2.  
Additionally, we incorporated further design details based on the factors outlined by [PERSON] and [PERSON] that influence immersion and presence. These include visual stimuli (e.g., user location display, color differentiation, highlighted cues), interactive stimuli (e.g., click-to-jump, hover-over display, pop-up functions), and informational stimuli (e.g., consistency with real-world information) [30; 65], as depicted in Figure 2. These elements serve as crucial precursory components of our model variables.  
The measurement metrics utilized in this study are derived from the existing literature and adapted based on the specific focus and objectives of this research. Specifically, the evaluation criteria for interactivity (Questions 6-10), visual guidance (Questions 11-15), and information content (Questions 16-20), and spatial cognition (questions 31-35) were adapted from the \" Evaluation scale for virtual tours of online museums\" developed by [PERSON], [PERSON] et al. [7] and [PERSON] [PERSON]'s \"Digital Museum Website User Assessment Scale\" [95], with further refinements. The metrics for immersion (Questions 21-25) and presence (Questions 26-30) are adapted from [PERSON]'s \"Presence Questionnaire Item Stems (Version 2.0)\" [65]. In total, the measurement instrument consisted of 30 items, all of which were measured on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). All items used in the questionnaire were adapted from validated questionnaires and translated into Chinese. The list of question items and reference sources of the questionnaire are shown in Table 1.  
Figure 2: Design experiment of museum mini-map. (The red dot indicates the location of the museum’s most treasured item. The blue dot indicates the relative positions of the exhibited items).