How Tencent’s Digital Platform Transforms the Sanxingdui Museum Experience
This case study explains how Tencent partnered with the Sanxingdui Museum to create a comprehensive digital visitor service platform that uses 3D artifact visualisation, immersive map navigation and a content‑rich website to deepen cultural appreciation and streamline museum tours for thousands of daily users.
The newly opened Sanxingdui Museum, a flagship of Chinese civilization, prompted the need for a convenient digital visitor service platform. Tencent and the museum formed a strategic partnership to fully digitise the experience, delivering official mini‑programs, a website and other services.
Design Strategy 1: Deep Appreciation of Ancient Shu Civilization
Research identified five key artifact categories—must‑see treasures, pattern designs, spiritual life, material craftsmanship, and excavation pits. The "Appreciation" module presents each category on a dedicated screen, offering detailed narratives and interactive 3D models of iconic items such as the bronze giant and bronze tree. Lighting effects and animated textures highlight sculptural details, while usage data showed an average stay of 32.7 seconds, surpassing comparable products.
Design Strategy 2: Immersive Map Navigation
A 3D‑modelled map of the new museum building and surrounding landscape enables visitors to locate exhibits, plan routes and discover the eight newly excavated sacrificial pits. The map integrates indoor navigation, real‑time route guidance and a "Find Artifact" feature that highlights key treasures, achieving an average interaction time of 359 seconds.
Design Strategy 3: Authoritative Website as Information Hub
The website adopts a split‑screen storytelling layout, each screen focusing on a distinct narrative about Sanxingdui culture. High‑resolution artifact images, custom colour schemes for bronze, gold, jade and pottery, and subtle cultural motifs create an immersive visual experience. Templates standardise detail pages for over 20 artifact types, facilitating future content updates.
Since its launch before the National Day holiday, the mini‑program serves nearly 20,000 global visitors daily, with a daily page view count of 50,500, outperforming similar museum apps. The combined design and technology solutions demonstrate how user‑centred digital products can enhance cultural heritage tourism.
Tencent Mobility Industry Design Center
The Tencent Mobility Industry Design Center (SMD) is Tencent's user experience team focused on the industrial internet.
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