See also: DIA - meeting with Matt Sikora, May 27th 2009
Matt Sikora, Director of Visitor Research
During this interview, Matt gave his feedback on Engage mapping scenarios, informed by prior work he has done @ the DIA. Last visitor research survey - about 4 years ago.
General feedback:
Scenarios are assuming a motivated, agenda-driven visitor. This is idealistic.
Personalization is not for everybody.
Pre-visit planning is most likely to occur by art history students and school teachers. E.g. mapping scenario of adult visitors who plan their visit to Vancouver Art Gallery - would be most realistic as an educator scenario.
Many of the scenarios give the visitor a series of complex choices. In other words, these scenarios present a number of different areas visitors must orient themselves to: (1) the museum itself - its floorplan, exhibits; (2) the art; (3) technology.
A few years go DIA did a survey with educators. Why take students to a museum? Inspiration. Opportunities for learning outside the classrom. Exploration. Taking a day off school.
Why do non-education (general public) visitors come to the museum?
Reasons for visiting a museum were less about a specific aesthetic experience.Visitors often don't have specific reasons for visiting. Motivations: Emotional, spiritual, social interaction, want to regenerate creativity & imaginations, opportunities for learning, atmosphere...
Accessibility
No visitor studes done in this area. Generally DIA is behind the times here. Comment cards have indicated frustration with DIA's parking situation. There has been some contacts made with local vision loss groups. Christine Reech from Museum of Science @ Boston is a good contact in this area.
Feedback on mapping scenarios:
Victor - http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Mapping+scenario+(adult+visitor+at+art+gallery)
- Likes how this address the need for people to wayfind / find object information. Especially if you don't know much about art or the building
- How do you serve people who are just wandering around the museum - those who will need to find out things as they go a long, on the fly?
Eigth-graders pre-visit - http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Mapping+scenario+(8th+graders%27+previsit+to+a+science+museum)
- One thing that is seen in research is the desire for teachers to have a sense of control over what is going to happen during their classroom visit to a musum.
- "Fear factor" for educators: you're taking a group of 50-60 kids to an art museum, a place where you're not really supposed to touch things.. How do you control that? Being able to plan for what will occur, expectations - that's very important for teachers. Inforamation about interpretives provided is also useful for teachers to know beforehand.
- 4 years ago - did a teacher focus group. Some findings: it's difficult to time visits. Setting up a schedule beforehand usually never ends up working out. There's a 50/50 chance teachers will arrive on time in school buses. Other findings: lots of teachers wish they had more time at museums, wish tours were longer.
- Teachers like resources to prepare for a visit. They like starting points, and resources they can adapt - this is where value would be in personalization.
Eigth-graders visit - http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Mapping+scenario+(8th+graders+visit+a+science+museum)
- Educators like task based activities in-museum, like visits to be centered around problems in an educational context
Eigth-graders post visit - http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Mapping+scenario+(8th+graders%27+postvisit+to+a+science+museum)
- Positive: people like having a record of their visit.
- Negative : but what is the value to the visitor? How could post-visit scrapbooking actually be useful? A momemto? A way to find more info about an object? Social media aspect? Plain old cultural tourism... ?
Engage products as visitor research tools
It would be good to get a sense of what visitors want/how they personalize - these could be indicators of engagement. When there is a clearer idea of what Engage products are visitor researchers can have a better sense of what they would be evaluating. Evaluation would probably track use patterns - tracking (how are tools used?) and timing (how long are they used for?)