Museums lean heavily on recent developments in communication technologies to create an authentic experience for online visitors of its galleries. This study examines whether three specific affordances of communication technology—customization, interactivity, and navigability—can provide the personal, social, and physical contexts, respectively, that are necessary for ensuring an enjoyable museum experience. A 2 (presence vs. absence of customizable gallery) × 2 (presence vs. absence of live-chat with others) × 2 (presence vs. absence of 3D navigational tool) between-subjects factorial experiment (N = 126) found that although each affordance is associated with distinct psychological benefits (customization with sense of agency and control, interactivity with reciprocity, and navigability with perceived reality), combining them on the same interface tends to undermine these benefits. In addition, power usage moderates the effectiveness of each affordance on the interface. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

In order to address the increased privacy and security concerns raised by mobile communications, designers of mobile applications and websites have come up with a variety of warnings and appeals. While some interstitials warn about potential risk to personal information due to an untrusted security certificate, others attempt to take users' minds away from privacy concerns by making tempting, time-sensitive offers. How effective are they? We conducted an online experiment (N = 220) to find out. Our data show that both these strategies raise red flags for users - appeals to instant gratification make users more leery of the site and warnings make them perceive greater threat to personal data. Yet, users tend to reveal more information about their social media accounts when warned about an insecure site. This is probably because users process these interstitials based on cognitive heuristics triggered by them. These findings hold important implications for the design of cues in mobile interfaces.