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2013: a (crowdsourced) digest

Yikes! Just a week before Christmas! Time for the obligatory “year in review” reflection pieces. What are the things that got everyone talking in 2013?

Rather than rely on just my own recollections, I put a call out over social media for people to nominate their blog posts or articles of the year – either their favourites or the most-read posts on their own blogs. As well as helping to jog my own memory, it’s a chance to get different perspectives on what caught the zeitgeist this year, as well as to catch up on things I might have missed the first time around.* It also makes a good holiday reading list.

Although I put out requests on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, the most responses by far were from the Twitter community (make of that what you will). So, in no particular order:

Nominated by @SebChan:

– Cooper Hewitt labs “B” is for Beta on the beta version of their collections website

– Planetary: the collection of code as a living object

– Embracing human imperfections and incompleteness through “institutional wabi sabi”

Nominated by @alli_burnie:

– Reacting to Objects: Mindfulness, Tech and Emotion

– The Value of the Local or Does Size Matter?

– Flip Flopping Art History

Nominated by @NateLandon:

– Cathy Bell on The View from Behind the Locked Gate: The Government Shutdown and the National Parks

– Destroying a place does not create a desert from the Slow Water Movement

Nominated by @ERodley:

– This excellent response to the debate triggered by the New York Times article “High Culture Goes Hands On” (which seemed to dominate online discussion through the month of August while I was in the US).

– Review of Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gallery One

– 2013 was also the year that Drinking About Museums seemed to gather more momentum (I was lucky to attend two while in the US – one in Boston and one in DC, and I know a few more Australian ones started out this year)

Nominated by Nigel Briggs (via LinkedIn)

– The BubblePlan exhibition design Tumblr blog.

A confession – I’ve had a Tumblr account for over three years, but I’ve never used it. I find the format of it confusing – at first I tried to use it as a blogging platform and gave up in exasperation. But just over the past few days I’ve started to look at it again and am considering giving it another go. Any suggestions for getting the most out of Tumblr would be welcome!

Nominated by @Mia_out:

– Open objects: new challenges in digital history was her most-read post this year.

– Mia also offered a general commentary on 2013 trends:

crowdsourcing, huge increase in tablet use on collections sites, and the on-going clash between museums’ established ways of producing exhibitions, galleries, and webby ways of working. And of course people are still obsessed with digital strategy/everything else strategy and games in museums.

Nominated by Cobi Smith (via Facebook):

Cobi reminded me of this “saw this and thought of you” link she tweeted me on informed consent issues associated with visitor research. A fitting one to include for this 2013, as the first half of this year is when I collected the lion’s share of my visitor data for my PhD.

Nominated by @Gretchjenn:

There was a lot of discussion around empathy this year. It was something that Gretchen and I both wrote about from a museum and interpretation perspective, and then started to see in all sorts of other places.

– Empathetic museum pop-up

– Empathy and institutional body language

– Seeing empathy in other places

In the same vein, my posts interpretive empathy and empathic design were among the most popular pages on my blog this year.

In closing, I’ll share this video that @MuseumsAskew forwarded about the difference between empathy and sympathy. Good food for thought for anyone who finds themselves needing to provide emotional support to friends and relatives over the holiday season.

Merry Christmas everyone and see you in 2014!

*I should confess: this is also a lazy way to get at least one blog post out this month when most of my time and energies have been consumed with either thesis writing or home renovations (More of the latter than the former, to be honest). Nonetheless, finishing the thesis will be the main goal for me in 2014. (Oh, and I’ll also be getting married. But that doesn’t require anywhere near as much preparation!)

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Think, Feel, Act: Using Psychology to understand visitor needs

Today I presented at the Interpretation Australia Masters Workshop in Sydney. My presentation was about “Understanding audiences” and following on from the Google hangout I did for IA earlier in the year, looked at what we can learn about visitor experiences from psychology.

The presentation is based on a Venn diagram made up of three circles: Think (representing cognition), Feel (representing affect) and Act (representing behaviour). During the presentation I argued that while there are many complex social and motivational reasons for people to visit museums and other cultural heritage sites, it can be boiled down to the fact that visitors anticipate the experience will satisfy at least some of their cognitive, affective and behavioural needs. And since psychology is the study of human affect, cognition and behaviour, it should be able to tell us something about what these needs might be.

The presentation is a quick armchair ride through some of the psychological literature I have encountered during my PhD research. Summary of the references referred to:

Appleton, J. (1988). Prospects and refuges revisited. In J. Nasar (Ed.), Environmental aesthetics: theory, research and applications (Vol. 3, pp. 27–44). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bitgood, S. (2011). Social Design in Museums: The Psychology of Visitor Studies. Collected Essays Volume One. Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Perennial.

Dahl, T. I., Entner, P. S., Johansen, A.-M. H., & Vittersø, J. (2013). Is Our Fascination With Museum Displays More About What We Think or How We Feel? Visitor Studies, 16(2), 160–180. doi:10.1080/10645578.2013.827011

Kaplan, S. (1988). Where cognition and affect meet: a theoretical analysis of preference. In J. L. Nasar (Ed.), Environmental aesthetics: theory, research and applications (pp. 56–63). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Litman, J. (2005). Curiosity and the pleasures of learning: Wanting and liking new information. Cognition & Emotion, 19(6), 793–814. doi:10.1080/02699930541000101

Norman, D. A. (2004). Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.

Packer, J. (2006). Learning for Fun: The Unique Contribution of Educational Leisure Experiences. Curator: The Museum Journal, 49(3), 329–344. doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.2006.tb00227.x

Plutchik, R. (1980). Emotion: A Psychoevolutionary Synthesis. New York: Harper and Row.

Rui Olds, A. (1994). Sending them home alive. In E. Hooper-Greenhill (Ed.), The Educational Role of the Museum (pp. 76–80). London: Routledge.

Russell, J. A., Ward, L. M., & Pratt, G. (1981). Affective Quality Attributed to Environments: A Factor Analytic Study. Environment and Behavior, 13(3), 259–288. doi:10.1177/0013916581133001

Smith, C., & Ellsworth, P. (1985). Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion. Journal of personality and social psychology, 48(4), 813–838. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3886875

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Mediation or interference?

When does interpretation cross the line from mediation – providing a hook or a link between audiences and content – into interference: “over-interpretation”, where it’s simply getting in the way of a meaningful experience? Does this line shift depending on the audience? On the subject matter? Whether its science or its art?

A presentation I went to a few weeks ago challenged me to think about these questions. A curator from an art gallery background was sharing some findings from a study tour to the US and the UK. One of the images was from an exhibit familiar to me as one I’d seen at the (then) newly refurbished Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow:

Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow
A photo I took of the exhibit in question when I visited Kelvingrove in 2006.

Now back in 2006 when I saw this exhibit, I thought it was a pretty neat idea. Superimposed over the 19th century painting “The Marriage of Convenience” by William Orchardson are three small screens inside thought bubbles. A touchscreen interface allows visitors to fill in the bubbles emanating from the three protagonists in answer to the question “What are they thinking?”.

Over the years I’ve seen this exhibit put forward by interpreters as a way of engaging family visitors with art. As an example of “best practice”. Now here I was, listening to someone someone going beyond critique and essentially presenting it as an object of ridicule. I decided to explore this further in the Q&A afterwards. What was it about this exhibit that so attracted her ire?

Essentially it boiled down to the fact that it was visually intrusive [1] and unnecessary to interpret a painting whose Victorian-era morality tale was “not rocket science” to comprehend. She considered it an insult to visitors’ intelligence. Furthermore (and more to the point in my opinion), apparently visitor feedback hadn’t been positive. However, no data was presented to support this claim so it’s hard to know if it’s based on an exhibit evaluation or just the criticisms of a more vocal minority.

I think a couple of points of context need to be raised here. This exhibit was displayed in what was intended as a family gallery. It wasn’t targeted at arts officionados who may be instantly aware of Victorian symbolism in art. I saw (and appreciated) the exhibit as something that was intended to be a hook for visitors who may otherwise not give the piece a second glance. It seems I’m not the only person who saw it that way, as this piece vividly describes:

One of the most amusing interactivities–I could have stood there all day–focused on William Orchardson’s “The Marriage of Convenience.” Most visitors would give this painting–wherein a rich old man dines with his young, beautiful and profoundly bored wife as a dubious butler attends–a quick glance and walk on, dismissing it as a dreary 19th century remnant. But Kelvingrove (which by this point seems to be staffed by Monty Python) had placed thought bubbles next to the painting’s three figures’ respective heads. “What are they thinking?” we were asked, and as passersby typed away, the thought bubbles changed…”This isn’t working out the way I planned.”…”I thought he’d be dead by now “… “The master appears to have made a big mistake.”…. A “dull, boring” relic suddenly sprang to life–and became as contemporary as today’s trophy wives.

So at this point it might be easy to dismiss the art curator’s critique as missing the point of the exhibit and reinforcing the myth that art can somehow “speak for itself” even to those who don’t speak the language. That would be a convenient way of dismissing the criticism, but I’m not sure it’s quite so simple as that. As Nicole Deufel pointed out recently, we often accept interpretive “best practice” on the basis of flimsy evidence. That’s why I’d be keen to see if there was any evaluation of this exhibit and what it said. Perhaps this exhibit doesn’t do what it set out to. For me the visitor is the ultimate arbiter and arguing amongst ourselves is going to generate more heat than light.

Having said that, there are some points about subject matter and learning styles that warrant some further thought and discussion. Firstly the issue of interpreting art. I’ve heard art curators use the term “over-interpretation”, but interestingly I’ve never heard anyone lay the same accusation at the feet of science exhibits. Coming from a science background, I get the sense that there is an implicit assumption among “art” people that art is inherently understandable, you just need to take the time to look and think for long enough. And all that pesky interpretation is just “shouty” paraphernalia that gets in the way.

Another point of difference is how much interpretive “mediation” different kinds of visitors feel they need. Again revealing my science training, I tend to like knowing “the answer”. So I can feel cast adrift with art, because I don’t feel “the answer” is being made available to me. Now sometimes I know there is no answer, and that’s kind of the point. I can appreciate that. But other times I do wonder if there *is* some point that I’m supposed to get but I’m missing. And that just makes me feel stupid.

Bottom line is that our needs as visitors are not all the same. As exhibit planners we need to understand, respect and accommodate these differences, which might sometimes mean doing things that satisfy our target audiences but drive us personally nuts.

[1] In the discussion it also emerged that there may be conservation issues with the way the exhibit is installed in relation to the painting, and also the hardware now looks clunky and dated some 7 years (and an app revolution) later. These critiques, while legitimate, are tangential to the debate here.

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Museum Atmospherics

I’ve recently had a review article published in the journal Visitor Studies titled  “Museum Atmospherics: the role of the exhibition environment in the visitor experience”. The abstract is here, there’s also a link to the full text [1].

The article is based on the literature review I did in the first year of my PhD and sets the scene for my research. It describes the concept of atmospherics, a term coined in the 1970s to describe how marketers and retail designers can influence consumer behaviour through design choices.

Atmospherics can be considered the psychology of consumer environments, and I provide an overview of the psychological theories that have informed atmospherics research. I also review some of the more notable studies that have been done in retail atmospherics, demonstrating relationships between design features and consumer behaviour. Comparable relationships exist in museum settings, and I argue that museums have sufficient similarities with retail and other service environments to make atmospherics relevant to the study of exhibition environments. Finally, the article sets out a research agenda for museum atmospherics as a way of further characterising the exhibition environment and its role in the visitor experience. This is the research gap that my PhD is helping to address. A work in progress!

[1] – Link to full text is available to Visitor Studies subscribers only (or libraries that have it as part of a Taylor & Francis subscription bundle). If you don’t have access to a subscription but would like a copy, I have a limited number of eprints available – just drop me a line in the contacts page and I’ll send you one.

 

 

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Are museums “lean forward” or “lean back” experiences?

“Lean forward” and “lean back” are terms that emerged in digital media to describe different engagement styles with screen-based experiences.

Lean back behaviour is envisaged as a passive, kick-back-with-a-beer-in-front-of-the-TV type of behaviour, whereas lean forward implies more hands-on engagement such as with gaming or surfing the web. Therefore, it has often been assumed that lean forward experiences require a higher level of engagement than lean back ones. But as this post argues, that doesn’t necessarily follow. Indeed, lean forward experiences are often hyperactive: full of distractions, shortcuts and multitasking. In contrast, lean back experiences can be conducive to engagement with more long-form media such as a book or a movie. Our level of intellectual absorption doesn’t always correspond with our level of activity.

I’m wondering what this means for museums, which under different circumstances may offer both lean forward and lean back experiences. Do certain types of visitors expect one type, and then disappointed if they find the other? Is this part of the reason why James Durston complains about Why He Hates Museums, meanwhile Judith Dobrzynski laments when High Culture Goes Hands On? (To bring in of the most talked-about museum articles in the mainstream press this past month or so. . . )

I first got on this train of thought while thinking about the word “entertainment” in the context of museums. We’ve well and truly moved on from the days when it was assumed education and entertainment were polar opposites. Even so, entertainment may not be the best word to use – “enjoyment” is spontaneously mentioned far more frequently by visitors than entertainment is [1]. I started off thinking that entertainment conjured up an image of a more passive kind of engagement – entertainment as something that is done to you.  On the other hand, enjoyment implies something that was more active and participatory- you enjoy doing something. I thought this might relate to lean forward versus lean back experiences, but now I’m not so sure it’s as simple as that.

What do you think?

 

[1] As reported by Tiina Roppola in Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience, 2012 (Routledge)

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Beyond the comfort zone

I’ve recently returned from a month-long sojourn in the US. In contrast to my frenetically paced, museum-focused study tour of 2012, this trip was primarily a holiday. Nonetheless, while in New York I eventually decided I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see the immersive theatre production Sleep No More. If nothing else, I itched to find out for myself what my venerable colleagues Suse Cairns, Ed Rodley and Seb Chan had been talking about all this time.

Sleep No More in Brief

The links above provide more detail that I won’t duplicate here, but to give a quick rundown: Sleep No More (SNM) is an immersive performance staged over five storeys of a converted warehouse in Chelsea. Upon arrival you navigate a dark, labyrinthine corridor to emerge at the Manderley Bar, which has a 1930s, film noir kind of feel (as does the production as a whole). In small groups you are escorted into an elevator, briefed, given a mask (only the performers are unmasked) and instructed to remain silent throughout the performance. Then, over the next three hours or so, it’s up to you to create your own experience: wander the spaces, explore the sets, follow different characters as they move through the different spaces and interact with one another. There is no dialogue, just a music soundtrack, movement, gesture and dance.

The Reluctant Visitor

I confess I needed some convincing to go see SNM (Seb finally talked me around when we caught up over lunch in NYC). Based on what I’d read, I suspected it wouldn’t particularly be my thing. Firstly, there would be lots of things happening at once and I’d need to make snap decisions about what to see and where to go, constantly facing the possibility I’d missed all the important bits (I hate that). Secondly, the performance is loosely based on Macbeth, a play I’ve never read and only have the vaguest idea of its plot (that’s the price of being in the science stream at high school). Finally, when it comes to theatre I feel like a bit of a dimwit at the best of times – I’m tone-deaf to its nuances and unless something’s really spelled out, I can miss the point spectacularly. So, chances were I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of what’s going on at SNM. However, Seb finally appealed to the exhibition designer in me, saying that if nothing else I should have a look at the layout of the spaces and the detail of the set design.

The Misfit Visitor

As it became time to head out from my hotel, I began to worry that I would be a bit of a square peg at this kind of gig. SNM being a piece of non-mainstream theatre in a city like New York, I pictured the crowd as being uber-hip arts afficionados. With my look being distinctively more housewife than hipster (especially given I’d packed for comfort, not trendsetting), I feared I’d stick out like a sore thumb – an unsophisticated out-of-towner who’d showed up to the wrong show by accident. Now this discomfort wasn’t enough to put me off from going – after all, I was there to research and observe, not fit in and make friends – but still I’m grateful for the reassurances I received over Twitter on my way there (thanks Mia, Seb and Suse!).

I emphasise this point because I think it’s instructive to go places where we think we won’t fit in from time to time. If we’ve been going to cultural venues for most of our lives, it’s easy to forget that visiting such places is not a natural and obvious thing for everyone. Particularly considering demographic groups who don’t tend to visit museums, I wonder how many of them are put off going because they’re worried that they’ll inadvertently do something inappropriate, or that staff and fellow visitors will somehow look down their noses at them? It’s useful to walk a mile in those shoes every so often.

My Experience

Similarly to my experience at MONA earlier this year, I made a conscious decision to be a “passenger” rather than a “driver”. I would go with the flow, explore and not worry too much about trying to “get” everything that was going on. This turned out to be a good approach as I would not really be able to tell you anything meaningful regarding what SNM was “about”, and I’m not really sure I’d do any better even if I had tried to follow and decode it more closely. I recognised up front that trying to make sense of all aspects of the experience was an exercise in futility. This strategy helped me avoid the frustration I’d normally experience when something happens that I don’t understand.

When it came to following the action I had an added practical problem – my size. I’m only 155cm (5’1″) tall. Most of the action was taking place within relatively confined spaces, in which I had to compete with lots of other audience members to get a glimpse of what was going on. Sometimes it was just too hard for me to get a clear line of sight to the performers, especially at times when they suddenly darted off to another part of the building (and I didn’t feel sure-footed enough in the dimly lit environment to join the scrum running after them). This frenetic pace got a bit much for me and most of the time I preferred to simply potter around the incredibly detailed sets: flicking through books, opening drawers, touching costumes, reading letters, and in some cases feeling through the darkness to see if a hidden area would reveal itself. These spaces appealed to literally all the senses: a range of different smells; the subversive feel of taking sweets from the sweet shop; the shock of unexpectedly brushing up against wet laundry hanging out.

On Seb’s recommendation I visited SNM alone, so the solo nature of the experience did not bother me. In fact I liked being able to follow my nose and spend as much or as little time as I wanted to at various things. However, despite ushers encouraging solo exploration during the briefing, I noticed a large number of couples and groups attempting to stay together during the performance  (I didn’t see ushers actively separating couples like Ed did so maybe they don’t enforce the solitary-ness as much as they used to).

Closing Thoughts

Overall I’m glad I went, and it’s the sort of thing you could go to again: no two visits would be the same, and you may also get more out of it if you’ve been before and already have a  sense of the layout of the space and how the whole thing works. Based on the way some of my fellow audience members appeared to anticipate certain events, I think there were quite a few repeat visitors.

However, even though SNM  was interesting to explore and my attention was engaged throughout, it still niggles me somewhat to experience something for three hours and at the end of it gain no sense of understanding regarding what it was all about. I think I’m one of those people who gains pleasure from having a glimmer of recognition and being able to work something out. Without this sense of closure, there is a slight feeling of being left hanging.

 

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Museum Visitor Experiences Part 4: Broadening

This is Part 4 of a four-part series of posts based on the book “Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience” by Tiina Roppola. Go to Part 1. Go to Part 2. Go to Part 3.

Broadening: visitors making sense of the museum experience

Broadening is the term Roppola uses to describe “[h]ow visitors find themselves in relationship with the interpretive content of museums” (Roppola, 2012, p.216) as they negotiate “the poetics and politics of display” (ibid. p. 217, original emphasis). Examples of broadening that take place in museums include:

  • Experiential broadening: seeing or doing something you would not normally have the chance to
  • Conceptual broadening: improving understanding of a theoretical principle
  • Affective broadening: exploration on an emotional level
  • Discursive broadening: considering an issue from another point of view

Roppola’s study encompassed a wide range of exhibit types – classical dioramas, multimedia exhibits, artefact-based displays and so on – covering topics across the sciences and the humanities. I’ll summarise some examples very briefly.

Broadening in the sciences:

  • Physical to Theoretical, Theoretical to Physical: the links people made between conceptual scientific knowledge and the physical experience of using hands-on interactive exhibits.
  • Standing in testimony to life: the ability for natural history and nature-based exhibits to increase an appreciation of the value and beauty of the natural world.
  • Science as storied: exhibits provoking visitors to think about the processes of science, science as having agency and acting in a broader social and political context.

Broadening in the humanities:

  • The guts story of people: engaging with powerful human stories on a visceral and emotional level
  • Who is telling whose story, and how? The representation of different cultural groups in the museum context prompts visitors to critically evaluate the way different cultures are presented and from whose perspective.
  • Speaking silences out loud: exhibits providing an opportunity for visitors to talk about things which usually remain unspoken – for instance death or a family member’s experience of war

Conclusion: Bringing it all Together

Framing, Resonating, Channelling and Broadening are not a sequence of processes that visitors undergo – all four can be seen taking place simultaneously over the course of a museum visit. What I find appealing about this study is that the theoretical constructs have emerged from the words of actual visitors in an exhibition context – it is a ‘home grown’ museological theory. Interestingly as well, three of the four concepts, Framing, Resonating and Channelling, are all relatively “content neutral” in that they describe the relationship between visitors and exhibits in a way that transcends the specific interpretive messages that exhibits are meant to convey. This is a novel insight, particularly since most museum visitor research historically has taken as its starting point what visitors “learn” from a given exhibition (however learning is defined).  It’s also encouraging as it mirrors the content-neutral approach my own research has attempted to take:  trying to understand the gamut of visitor experiences that include but are not limited to the specifics of exhibit content.

Summarising the complexities and nuances of a whole book in a mere 4 blog posts is an impossible task – I’ve necessarily been superficial in my treatment. However, I hope I’ve adequately conveyed the main ideas (and encouraged you to read further).

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Museum Visitor Experiences Part 3: Channelling

This is Part 3 of a four-part series of posts based on the book “Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience” by Tiina Roppola. Go to Part 1. Go to Part 2.

Channelling: the museum visit through space and time

Museum exhibitions can be considered as four-dimensional media – we physically move through them in both space and time. Roppola describes how visitors navigate this trajectory in terms of “channelling”. More than simply wayfinding, channeling describes how “visitors [find] their way through museums conceptually, attentionally, perceptually as well as physically” (Roppola 2012, p. 174). She defines three different types of channels – spatial channels, narrative channels, and multimodal/multimedial channels.

Spatial channels

The most literal interpretation of the channelling concept, spatial channels pertain to the way that visitors ‘read’ museum environments and act accordingly. Some spaces encourage visitors to linger, others chivvy them along. Seating allows time to rest, recharge and ponder. Where seating is provided, it sends visitors a message that lingering is encouraged. Visitors are more likely to sit and watch a video to the end if there’s a place to sit. Conversely, thin galleries may be perceived as corridors and moved through quickly. Doorways and escalators can have a magnetic effect, pulling visitors towards them. But for other visitors, such thresholds may act as a barrier and they hover at the edges rather than enter. In the same way, small enclosed spaces are inviting to some, offputting to others. (In my own research, I’ve noticed how doorways or even just a slight narrowing of gallery can act as a sort of “reset” function– visitors can be seen to act as if they are in a new environment once they’ve crossed that threshold.)  

Visitors also vary in the extent to which they want spatial channels to guide them along a certain path – something which emerged in my visitor interviews and which I’ve commented on previously.  

Narrative Channels

While spatial channels address the physical movement through an exhibition, narrative channels pertain to the conceptual journey of the visitor. Again, this is something that I’ve been thinking about lately, with respect to my own approach to museum visits. An absence of narrative is often confusing and disconcerting for visitors, but then again not always: it depends on your expectations – do you want to take control or are you happy to go along for the ride? (This brings us back to the concept of Framing which was discussed in Part 1 of this series.)

Without a discernible narrative, an exhibition can be seen as “all mixed up”, “all over the place”, “cluttered”, or having “no real point” (visitors quoted in Roppola, 2012, pp. 204-205). Many visitors described the importance of some kind of theme as a way of organising an exhibition (which will be music to the ears of many interpreters!)

Multimodal/Multimedial Channels

Multimodality is a semiotic concept that encompasses all ways a culture might express meaning. Text, speech, images, gestures and sounds are all examples of semiotic modes. Even fonts and colours can be considered modes in some contexts. Multimodality is thus the integration of multiple modes in the creation of meaning – in a conversation, for instance, meaning is conveyed not just in the words spoken but through tone of voice, gestures and proximity of the speakers. Furthermore, individual modes can be manifested through different media – the mode of text can be communicated through a wide range of media such as a magazine, a scroll of parchment, or an exhibit label.

Multimodal and multimedial channelling thus describes how visitors interact with the different modes and media embodied in museum exhibits. Roppola  describes the following:

  • Restorative channelling: a diversity of media helps “break up” content, enhancing interest and reducing fatigue associated with reading “panels and panels and panels of text” (visitor quoted in Roppola, 2012, p.190).
  • Selective channelling: a way of directing visitor attention. Less is more with selective channeling –  a minimalist approach helps to provide a clear focal point to a display. Text hierarchies are also a form of selective channeling by suggesting an order in which to engage with the content.
  • Fragmented channelling: caused by too much complexity without sufficient coherence to enable visitors to make sense of it (touching on Kaplan’s theories I’ve described previously – complexity is only pleasant if it’s legible enough for us to make sense of). Fragmented channels can also result from having too large a physical distance between related items (e.g. a label too far away from the object it describes), or having adjacent exhibits competing with each other for visitor attention.
  • Synchronous channelling: a harmonious relationship between the multimedial elements of an exhibit. The different parts of the exhibit enhance and complement each other rather than competing for attention. Unlike in fragmented challenging, the complexity of multiple modes and media is complemented by coherence.

One good example of channelling I’ve seen is the “Voices from Eastern State Penitentiary” exhibit (see here). This combined synchronous channelling (the pairing of text, audio and images) and spatial channelling (the sequential positioning of the images along a corridor) help to create a coherent experience through space and time.

Next week – Broadening.

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Museum Visitor Experiences Part 2: Resonating

This is Part 2 of a four-part series of posts based on the book “Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience” by Tiina Roppola. Go to Part 1.

Resonating: features that attract and repel visitors

In interviews, visitors often described feeling “drawn to” particular exhibition environments and displays. Roppola uses the concept of resonance to characterise this interaction between visitors and features of the exhibition environment. In physics, ‘resonance’ is used to describe the amplification effect observed when two bodies vibrate at the same wavelength. Similarly, visitors and exhibits can be considered as being in a resonant relationship when they are ‘in tune’ with one another.

Certain environmental features, such as “size, beauty, colour, light, a quality of realism, sensory change/movement and opportunity for action” (Roppola, 2012, p. 126) tend to attract visitors and draw them in. Spatial characteristics can also be resonant – environments that feel pleasant to be in owing to characteristics such as light, spaciousness or aesthetic appeal.

Perceptual resonance

Resonance can be achieved by the way that sensory cues of exhibits interact with our perceptual systems. Sensory cues can be seen as “bottom up” data, which we interpret using “top down” mental constructs – an example is how we readily interpret two dots and a curved line as a smiley face (see below). This process of “filling in” the gap between bottom up sensory data and top down constructs can happen within one sense or between multiple senses (eg. visual cues working with auditory information to create an integrated whole).

Perceptual resonance in the visual sense. This image comprises just three lines but we use this bottom-up visual cue along with our top-down concept of a human face to “fill in” the gaps and perceive this as a picture of a smiley face.

Exhibits can take advantage of this intrasensory augmentation to create an enhanced sense of realism – for instance simulator exhibits combine immersive visual stimuli with a relatively modest amount of movement to create a feeling of flying or being in motion. In immersive exhibits or recreated environments, sound effects and smell can be used to enhance realism by hinting at the presence of things unseen – such as bread baking in an oven or the faint cry of a child in the distance. However, simply combining sounds, sights, smells and textures does not automatically create a coherent perceptual whole; the sensory information needs to be congruent with the top-level mental constructs through which visitors interpret them.

 

 

Coalescent resonance and how visitors define “interactivity”

Coalescent resonance occurs when two separate entities come together to form a complementary whole. In an exhibit context, this can mean feeling “part of” the exhibition environment: “visitors can physically, personally and socially interact with, or feel part of, exhibition environments” (Roppola p. 151, original emphasis). Physical coalescence can be literal, such as being able to directly touch or get up close to exhibits; it can also be conceptual as visitors are encouraged to imagine themselves in a given setting or scenario.

Interestingly, Roppola describes several instances where visitors use the term “interactive” in a sense that is very different from the way exhibit designers and other museum professionals use it – namely, that an “interactive” exhibit is one that visitors physically touch or manipulate in some way. This prerequisite seemed less important to visitors, who also used the word “interactive” to pertain to exhibits that allowed physical proximity or social interaction, but not necessarily hands-on contact. A museum professional may call this latter type of exhibit “immersive” rather than “interactive” [1]. This different understanding of the term “interactive” shows the value of qualitative research in validating the terminology we use – when people say they want more “interactive” experiences, do they mean what we’ve assumed they mean?

Impeding Resonance

Just as environmental stimuli can enhance a resonant relationship between visitors and exhibits, they can also impede it. Things that can impede or block resonant experiences:

  • “You can only take so much in” – a museum visit can saturate your sensory and cognitive capacities. Visitors deploy strategies to allocate their time and mental budgets according to their interests. A sense of “too much to take in” can be overwhelming and prevent visitors from engaging with an exhibition.
  • “It’s all jumbled”- the sense of there being too much to take in can be exacerbated by the lack of a clear order or logic with which to make sense of an exhibit. The ‘signal’ of an interpretive message is lost in the ‘noise’ of an overly cluttered display – different features compete and cancel each other out.
  • “The people I’m with won’t let me” – visitors might spend less time on an exhibit than they would like if they feel they’re being hurried along by their companions. Queues and crowding can impede resonance by getting in the way or making an environment less pleasant by their presence.

Next week – Channelling

[1] In my own research, I found that “immersive” was not a word that resonated particularly with visitors when asked to describe exhibit environments. I used the word in my pilot questionnaire and several visitors said they didn’t know what the word meant (and the pilot results suggested these people were just the tip of the iceberg). Given the amount of museological discourse there currently is around “immersive experiences”, this is a point worth noting – we’re potentially talking about visitor experiences in terms visitors would not recognise.

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Museum Visitor Experiences Part 1: Framing

Over the next few weeks I’ll be featuring “Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience” by Tiina Roppola (Routledge) [1]. This book is based on Tiina’s PhD research, during which she interviewed over 200 visitors at more than 20 exhibits across a range of Australian museums. Four key elements of visitor experiences emerged from this qualitative, grounded study: Framing, Resonating, Channelling and Broadening. I’ll be presenting summaries of each of these in turn – this week: Framing.

Framing – the assumptions we bring with us

Framing is a semiotic concept used to describe the overarching structures people apply to objects and situations to aid their interpretation.  Frames are essentially a collection of categories, criteria and expectations we use as part of the meaning-making process.

People have frames for museums and for exhibits, which are informed by their past experiences. These “frame” the encounters they will have as visitors. Not everyone brings the same gamut of frames to their museum visit, although there are some common patterns. Accordingly, Roppola identified a number of frames that people tend have about museums and exhibits:

Museum Frames:

  • The “displayer of artefacts” frame: for visitors holding this frame, the defining characteristic of a museum is the display of material objects. Other types of displays and interpretive media may be dismissed or ignored as not being “real things”.
  • The “learning” frame: an expectation that museums are primarily a site for learning, and that the museum will be an authoritative source of facts and knowledge. People may visit museums to enact their identity of being learning-oriented people.
  • The “enjoyment” frame: held by visitors who find museums pleasurable places to be. This could be through interaction with certain kinds of interpretive content or simply through appreciation of the general ambiance. “Enjoyment” can mean “fun”, but not necessarily so: people can also talk about “enjoying” more solemn experiences in a museum context. [2]
  • The “pilgrimage” frame: applies to visits to see specific personally or culturally significant objects or sites. People queue to see the Mona Lisa so they can say that they’ve seen it. In an Australian context, many people visit Melbourne Museum specifically to see the racehorse Phar Lap. War Memorials are also a site of cultural pilgrimage.

Visitors may also hold different frames for different types of museums. So what is deemed appropriate (ie.,frame-congrent) in an art gallery might be considered baffling or even offensive in the context of a natural or cultural history museum. In the art gallery, there is an expectation that exhibits may be metaphorical, but transplant the same item to a museum and it may be taken literally and not recognised as art at all.

Exhibit Frames:

  • “Materially distinct” – an expectation that exhibits will be different from things you can see elsewhere (e.g. in a book, on the web, or on TV).
  • “Explanatory” – exhibits should provide sufficient information and adequate labelling. Insufficient information can leave visitors frustrated and unsatisfied.
  • “Temporal” – exhibits should be regularly updated so that there is always something new to see.

In many cases, these frames were only specifically mentioned when they had been violated in some way. When visitors encountered exhibits that were contrary to their frames of what an exhibit is “supposed” to be, the response was often negative. This is typical of frames more generally – we aren’t consciously aware of them unless we encounter something which is incongruent with them.

Reframing

Our frames are not static and they will evolve and change as we encounter new situations. This reframing can be both positive and negative. For instance, modern museum buildings that are open and bathed in natural light can represent a positive reframing for people who see the traditional museum as “dark and dusty”. But conversely, some visitors may find discordance in the juxtaposition of old objects and modern architecture.

Satisfying encounters with different types of interpretive media can lead to reframing – for instance moving from a more passive “displayer of artefacts” museum frame to one that incorporates a broader mix of media including more tactile and interactive elements.

Next week – Resonating

[1] I first met Tiina at the 2010 Museums Australia conference, where I tracked her down and quizzed her about her research (it was while I was developing my own PhD research proposal). We’ve since become friends and colleagues and her work has been a big influence on mine. As I go through my own data I’m seeing many parallels with her findings, although I remain in awe at the depth and sophistication of what she produced for her PhD. It’s an exemplary piece of qualitative research and I can’t really do it justice here. I highly recommend the book, which is richly illustrated with quotes from the visitor interviews.

[2] Roppola draws the distinction between “enjoyment” (a word that spontaneously emerged in her interviews) and “entertainment” (which was seldom mentioned). This is an important semantic difference to my mind, and one I’ll come back to in a future post.