On my recent trip to Hobart I took in the recently refurbished Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Overall I was impressed, but now it’s a couple of months later I think the thing that sticks in my mind the most is an exhibit on the top floor of the refurbished Bond Store building – the Parrawa, Parrawa! exhibition. This deals with the European invasion of lutruwita (Tasmania) and the resulting war between 1823 and 1831.
The space is fairly understated in its design and is reasonably sparse with respect to density of exhibits (I mean this in a good, less is more sort of way).
The exhibit I spent the most time at was a set of paired projections – on opposite sides of the gallery from one another – one telling stories of battles from a European perspective and the other from an Aboriginal perspective. It’s hard to capture in images but here’s a few examples:
This short video clip (15 secs) might give a better idea of the juxtapostion of the screens within the gallery. I took the video from a bench that was positioned offset from but between the two screens. I sat there for a while alongside a fellow visitor, while we periodically turned our heads from side to side to see the two screens, as they are both screening simultaneously (I mused that we might have looked like spectators at a tennis match, although we weren’t always moving in sync with one another!).
It’s interesting for me to reflect on this experience from both the perspective of a visitor and a former exhibition designer. Had I been on the design team for this exhibition, I can imagine that I may well have argued against this positioning of the screens such that you had to keep turning your head to follow them both. However, I would have been proven wrong as I think in this instance it actually works.
For a start, it positions the two opposing views as more clearly “facing off” against one another. It’s hard to see both perspectives at once (which mirrors the intellectual concept of the exhibit nicely – war is often about ‘taking sides’ whether you want to or not). Also, the provision of a bench makes all the difference – it signals a vantage point from which you can view both screens without obstructing others. And viewing them seated also allows a more reflective engagement with the content. I overheard one visitor say to her companion that “it’s hard to look at*, but that’s good because it makes you want to watch it again.”
This would be an fascinating exhibit to observe visitors at – once visitors did engage with it, they did seem to spend a fair bit of time at it. But if you breezed past, you may not necessarily have “got” what the exhibit was all about – it could have looked like two disconnected screens depending on what was going on when you walked past. I wonder how these different levels of engagement would look over an extended period of time – over to you, TMAG!
* From the context it was clear she meant physically difficult, not ‘hard’ as in the ‘hot’ nature of the subject matter – although that may also apply in this instance.
Recently I finished reading What makes learning fun? Principles for the Design of Intrinsically Motivating Museum Exhibits by Deborah L. Perry. On one level, it’s a detailed case study of how visitors interact with one of the classic science centre exhibits, Coloured Shadows. On another level, it’s a characterisation of six key motivations that exhibits must satisfy in order to make learning inherently fun. Perry positions these in the context of Interpretive Activism, which she defines as:
. . .the process of advocating for and incorporating research-based, visitor-centered exhibit design principles and strategies that facilitate active visitor participation in the interpretive process. [Perry, 2012, p. 27]
A key element of interpretive activism is to conceive of exhibits as catalysts (for visitors own conversations and active learning) rather than simply conduits (for information):
Rather than lecturing and monopolising the language space . . . what if [museums] gave visitors the tools they need to engage in meaningful conversations with their companions? In other words, what if exhibits (including labels, but other components as well) were specifically designed to contribute to visitors’ conversations rather than interrupting them? [Perry, 2012, p.29]
Over a period of many years, Perry adjusted the design of the exhibit and accompanying interpretive information, testing the results each time with a range of visitors. It’s an interesting example of how certain exhibit features can act as interpretive red-herrings as people make sense of the exhibit.
Coloured shadows is a hands-on exhibit that allows visitors to explore the additive properties of light mixing. (Image source: Exploratorium)
Then, using features of this exhibit as an example, Perry explores the six motivations that sit at the base of the Selinda model of learning (shown below). They’re described in terms that will make the most sense in the context of hands-on exhibits, although the fundamental principles can be applied more broadly. I’ll summarise these briefly below (to the extent that I can summarise several book chapters in a single blog post!) . . .
The Selinda Model of learning (Source: Selinda research)
Communication:“Visitors are smarter than we think they are and know less than we think they do . . . [D]esign interpretation that gives visitors what they need to start a naturally occurring meaning-making process with their companions” (Perry, 2012, p. 94). People often visit museums in groups. Exhibits should acknowledge this, allowing for and encouraging social interaction and collaboration between visitors within social groups. Cater for a range of abilities (especially in exhibits targeted at families where there will be children at different ages). Use natural language in labels. Identify points where visitors may get stuck and offer guidance.
Curiosity: Stimulate perceptual and intellectual curiosity. Pique interest by leaving some things unsaid – while too little information can be frustrating, if things are too obvious then curiosity can wane.
Confidence: visitors will be motivated to learn in situations they feel “safe and smart”. (ibid, p. 118). Feedback should come early and come often. Success breeds a feeling of success and exhibits should guide the visitor through a “series of minisuccesses” (ibid, p. 131).
Challenge: confidence and competence needs to be balanced with an appropriate level of uncertainty and challenge. Ensure visitors are clear what is expected of them, but don’t suggest that success will be automatic – visitors will not feel challenged if they can just go through the motions and be successful anyway.
Control: the need for us to have control over our environment is an important facet of the psychology of visitor experiences. Visitors will feel in control when they have appropriate choices and the power to influence what happens in the environment.
Play: play and the ability to engage the imagination is an essential ingredient of free-choice learning. ” . . . visitors who have the most satisfying and enjoyable experiences are those who feel the most playful – playful with actions yes, but also playful with ideas, playful with thoughts, playful all over” (ibid, p. 171).
Perry, D. (2012). What Makes Learning Fun? Principles for the Design of Intrinsically Motivating Museum Exhibits. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
Over the past couple of days I’ve been catching up on back episodes of Suse Cairns’ and Jeffry Inscho’s Museopunks podcast series. This morning I was listening to Episode 2, which is on design and design thinking for museums.
Now while I’ve heard a lot said about design thinking over the past couple of years, I have to confess I’ve had a bit of trouble wrapping my head around what design thinking actually is. Then just last week someone helpfully tweeted a link to this post, which I found enormously enlightening as it positioned design thinking in contrast to other, more traditional ways of thinking and problem solving. In essence, design thinking comes about as a consequence of seeing the world as being essentially unpredictable, but at the same time seeing people and organisations as having the power to influence the future (although the outcomes of our actions can’t be predicted at the outset). In that conceptual framework, I can see how the iterative, prototype-and-test approach of design thinking fits. (Ironic that my analytic brain needed a box to fit it in before I could really grasp it!)
A model of design thinking (enacting), contrasting it to analytical, strategic and responsive approaches. (Source http://designinteams.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/matrix-01.jpg?w=420&h=411)
Then this morning I was listening to Dana Mitroff Silvers being interviewed on museopunks and got really excited when she mentioned empathy [1] as the jumping off point for design thinking (more on this in her Museums and the Web paper). Essentially, before we can go off designing “solutions” to things, we need to empathise with our audiences/users, in other words understand whatever “problem” we’re trying to solve from their perspective:
. . . the majority of museums have yet to adopt mindsets and attitudes that are truly visitor-centered. . . Despite the lip service paid to the voice of the visitor, the expertise of museum staff is often afforded higher priority than the visitor insights and experiences. . . As a result, museums have been slow to keep pace with the expectations and interests of visitors, who increasingly expect experiences, services, and products that are intuitive, responsive, and well designed. [2]
The depth of understanding required to achieve this empathy goes beyond that possible with simple surveys or focus groups, and requires ethnographic methods and detailed interviews. The paper offers some useful tools and approaches for doing this.
The five processes of design thinking. This is not necessarily a linear process and there may be multiple iterations of each process in a given project. (Source: Mitroff Silvers et al: http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/mitroff.fig1_.jpg)
The M&W paper gives a good summary of these five stages, including examples and practical tips. There is also a spinoff website: Design Thinking for Museums.
I find these ideas really fascinating and exciting, and they present a real challenge to the “traditional” model of exhibition design procurement. This is the model I have worked within when working as a design consultant, particularly for new-build museums: exhibitions are procured using very similar processes to those used in construction or engineering (in new museums, the overall project management team is likely to be the same people who oversaw the cranes-and-concrete stage). Exhibitions are viewed as products that are subject to competitive tender and linear signoff processes. Going back to the grid above, these processes are very much in the bottom half – analytic and strategic – outcomes are assumed to be quantifiable and predictable at the outset. In contrast to an iterative design process, these processes result in something I’ll call “ratchet design” – design as a one way process. If something doesn’t turn out as originally planned, then that counts as a “failure” which is going to result in lost time, sunk costs and a whole lot of finger pointing.
For several years, designers (and others) have been saying that the “ratchet” approach doesn’t do anyone any favours. Follow any design group on LinkedIn for long enough and the same issues will reappear: design competitions as part of a tendering process force designers (often without payment) to solve a problem before they have a chance to adequately define it. Then, once a designer appointed, the lack of scope for iteration makes it easier for everyone to just “play it safe”, limiting creativity and innovation. Ironically, exhibition projects are often shoehorned into this analytical-strategic construction model in the interests of “best value”. Uncertainty might scare the bean counters, but all that ends up happening is that everyone hedges against it by upping their contingencies, ultimately driving up costs.
At the moment, it appears that design thinking in museums is most commonly applied to smaller, agile projects run by in-house teams (although I’ve been out of the consultancy game for a while now and maybe the tide has turned somewhat). It would be great to see a design thinking approach applied more widely and at larger, whole museum scales (and for the bean counters to have sufficient faith in the process to allow this to happen).
[1] Recently I’ve been thinking and writing about empathy in the context of interpretation and the relationship between museums and their visitors/guests/however we are to define them. I was writing about this, completely unaware of this parallel discussion that had been going on around empathy and design. It’s great to see synchronicities like this.
[2] Mitroff Silvers, D, Rogers, M and Wilson, M. (2013) Design Thinking for Visitor Engagement: Tackling One Museum’s Big Challenge through Human-centered Design. Paper presented at the 2013 Museums and the Web conference, Portland, Oregon.
In a previous post, Interpretive Empathy, I started to explore the issue of treating visitors as “guests”, and what assumptions underlie such a definition. Alli Burness has posted a piece in response, in which she discusses the role of a feeling of belonging in the context of a guest-host relationship. This has made me think a little more about the guest-host dynamic and what it means for museums.
I should place this guest-host discussion in some sociocultural context, as the way we perceive being guests or hosts will depend on our cultural attitudes. Despite our reputation for being laid back and welcoming, studies have shown that compared to some countries, Australians are quite reluctant to invite guests into their homes – particularly people they don’t know well. I remember it being drummed into me during my during my childhood that when visiting friends I had to be a “good” guest – which, among other things, meant that I should not “wear out my welcome”. This shows how in Australian culture, being a guest can be fraught with trepidation. Hosts are assumed to be hosting you under sufferance. Thus, as a guest you must tread carefully, avoiding inadvertently flouting unspoken rules or norms of behaviour. This anxiety of being in unfamiliar territory can be amplified if you perceive your host to be one of your social “betters” in some way shape or form (and despite what they say, Australia isn’t a classless society and there is an unspoken social hierarchy).
Compare this trepidation surrounding visiting someone new to visiting a family member or close friend. The anxiety about unspoken rules is not there, the “welcome” is sufficiently robust to be never “worn out”, and you don’t feel like anyone’s going to judge you on the basis of any behavioural faux pas.
And this brings me back to Alli’s idea of belonging – there are obviously different flavours of guest-host relationship. Familiarity is a big factor – if you’ve visited hundreds of museums before, then you’re likely to feel more comfortable irrespective of how well that museum does their “welcome”. But what if you’re less familiar? Creating that sense of belonging – coupled with a willingness to share – might be the key ingredient to a guest-host relationship that really works.
It’s always exciting when your research data throws up something counter-intuitive. Or at least something that’s at odds with “conventional wisdom” on the subject.
One such piece of wisdom about museum visitors is that young adults (particularly those aged under 25) tend not to visit museums. Population-level statistical data tends to back this up, with a characteristic dip in the 18-24 age bracket (see this graphic from a previous post):
Heritage visitation in Australia by age. Percentage of respondents who visited a heritage site in the previous 12 months (Source: ABS)
Now, here is the age breakdown of the respondents to my visitor survey conducted at the SA Museum as part of my PhD research:
Not only are visitors aged under 30 not under-represented, they form the biggest age group I surveyed by a considerable margin! This is a surprising (albeit incidental) finding from my research which makes me wonder what’s going on here. Based on what I observed at the Museum during my fieldwork I have come up with the following hypotheses:
Proximity to university campuses.The SA Museum is right next door to Adelaide University and not very far from one of the main campuses of the University of South Australia. I got into conversation with a couple of groups of young adults who indicated they were visiting the museum to kill time between lectures.
The backpacker factor: The SA Museum is a popular destination with both interstate and international visitors (more than half of my sample indicated they were visiting the Museum for the first time, and I would wager that the majority of these people were tourists). Among the survey sample, there appeared to be considerable numbers of young “backpacker” tourists (based on my fieldwork observations). Anecdotally, it appeared that younger international tourists were less likely to experience the language barriers of older tourists, which would have prevented them from participating in the study (about 7% of the visitors I approached to complete a survey had limited or no English).
Free and centrally located: a few people indicated they were in the museum because it was free to enter and a way of escaping the heat or rain. There were a couple of people who were waiting for someone with a hospital appointment (the Royal Adelaide Hospital is just down the road). Of course, they could have also spent this time in the shopping malls which are just across the road – but for some reason chose not to. So there is clearly some other characteristics of the museum that are attractive to them but which were beyond the scope of this survey. Others appear to have been ‘doing’ the precinct, visiting the Art Gallery of South Australia (next door) as well as the museum.
Young parents:A fair proportion of those in the 18-29 age group were accompanying young(ish) children.I don’t know if it’s just me, but I sense there has been a demographic shift between Generations X and Y. Most people of my (Gen X) vintage seemed to be well into their thirties before they settled down and started families. I suspect Gen Ys are having children younger, for a whole range of complex reasons which are beyond the scope of this post. This is just a gut feeling though – I haven’t cracked open the data.
Young couples: There was a surprising proportion of young (and highly demonstrative!) couples around. The museum as a date venue?
Patterns in the smoke:There is of course the possibility that this cluster is just a random quirk of my particular data set. However, the surveys were conducted across weekdays, weekends and public holidays (but not school holidays) to help control for variation in visiting patterns. My fieldwork observations show nothing to indicate that 18-29 year olds were more likely to agree to complete a survey than other age groups.
In retrospect, it would have been good if I’d been able to distinguish between the under and over 25s by splitting the age ranges the way the ABS do (I had a reason why I didn’t but in any case it’s no big deal). However, I went back to a pilot sample from late last year and found the age spread using different categories was broadly similar:
So what does all this mean? I’m not sure yet. Age is not expected to be a significant variable in my own research, and I only collected very basic demographic information so I had a general sense of the survey population. I’d be interested in how this tallies with other museums though, particularly those that are free as opposed to ticketed entry. Ticketed venues tend to collect more comprehensive visitor data, and we tend to extrapolate from that. But perhaps they are not fully representative of museums as a whole?
A recent posting by Gretchen Jennings on the Museum Commons blog has got me thinking about empathy, and the role it plays in interpretation. Gretchen was writing mostly in the context of how museums (can fail to) respond empathetically to traumatic events in the local community. But I want to broaden the concept out and assert that empathy is essential for good interpretive practice full stop.
Back in 1999 Zahava Doering identified three main ways that museums could relate to their audiences:
As strangers: the museum’s primary responsibility is to the collection; any public obligation is fulfilled grudgingly: “The public, while admitted, is viewed as strangers (at best) and intruders (at worst). The public is expected to acknowledge that by virtue of being admitted, it has been granted a special privilege” (Doering, 1999, p.75). They might be a dying breed these days, but we all know those museum professionals who think the museum would be a whole lot better than all those visitors messing up the place.
As guests: museums take responsibility for their visitors and want to provide them with beneficial experiences. “This “doing good” is usually expressed as “educational” activities and institutionally defined objectives. The visitor-guests are assumed to be eager for this assistance and receptive to this approach” (ibid, p.75). It could be argued that these museums have well-meaning but ultimately paternalistic views towards their visitors. The implicit assumption is that we know best and are smarter than the average visitor.
As clients: the museum’s primary responsibility is to be accountable to the visitor. “The visitor is no longer subordinate to the museum. The museum no longer seeks to impose the visit experience that it deems most appropriate” (ibid, p. 75).
When Doering wrote this in 1999, she suggested that most museums were in a “guest”- style relationship with their audiences. While social and technological developments have changed the nature of the museum-visitor relationship since, the “guest” mode probably still prevails. So what does this have to do with empathy?
Well, I think it boils down to relating to visitors as fellow human beings. Unless we are genuinely interested in our visitors as people – their backstories, their worldviews, their life experiences, then how can we expect them to become engaged with us? Engagement is a two-way street and we should want to connect to visitors as much as we want them to connect with us. I enjoy talking to visitors. It’s one of the things that attracted me to visitor research, and I love going to presentations by other researchers who clearly share this empathy for the audiences they interact with.
If there is a barrier to engagement, perhaps it’s because we’re being too clever for our own good. Those of us who work in museums are part of the community, not apart from it. If we see ourselves as somehow separate, then that’s inevitably going to translate into how we go about doing our job – we’ll default to “guest-mode” thinking.
When I’m thinking about interpretive empathy, I’m not sure if the “client” model that Doering described is quite what I’m getting at. I’m wondering if it’s more of a “compatriot” mode, but I’m not entirely happy with that term either. What do you think?
Doering, Z. D. (1999). Strangers, Guests, or Clients? Visitor Experiences in Museums. Curator: The Museum Journal, 42(2), 74–87. doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.1999.tb01132.x
This morning I participated in a Google Hangout as part of Interpretation Australia’s “Thought Leaders in Interpretation” series. It was an opportunity to share some ideas based on my research in a small-group format. Some participants requested a bit more background to the theory I mentioned, so this post is a brief summary of some of the psychological concepts I discussed in the Hangout.
My research is based on principles arising from Environmental Psychology. Environmental psychology is the study of the interplay between people and their environments. It is conceived as a reciprocal relationship, in that people both affect and are affected by their environment (where “environment” comprises physical, social and cultural elements).
Environments as Information Landscapes
I’ve been influenced by the work of Rachel and Stephen Kaplan (e.g. Kaplan & Kaplan, 2009; Kaplan, 1987, 1988), who conceptualise people as information-seekers and environments as information landscapes. The person-environment interaction will therefore depend on what information is present in the environment, and which parts of that information are salient to a given person in a given context at a given time. In other words what we perceive, how we feel about it, and how we behave as a consequence are all a function of not only the stimuli present in the environment, but what we are looking for, needing or expecting at the time.
Kaplan and Kaplan have classified our information needs under two broad categories: understanding (making sense of our environment) and exploration (the promise of additional salient information). Information can be further categorised based on whether it is immediately apparent or can be inferred or predicted. This gives us four different types of information: Coherence, Complexity, Legibility and Mystery (see table).
So we like to be able to make sense of our environment, but not have it so featureless and predictable that it’s not worth investigating further. But too much complexity can also be a turn-off, if it makes the environment too information-rich for us to process. Our cognitive systems can only deal with so much new information at once.
The Need for Safety
More fundamental than the need for information is the need to feel safe – we tend to avoid environments where we feel vulnerable or exposed, or at least move through them quickly. This can be explained in terms of Prospect and Refuge theory (Appleton, 1988). Going back to our evolutionary roots, we seek out places where we have a good vantage point of our surroundings (Prospect) without being vulnerable to an unexpected approach (Refuge). While we no longer need to evade predators on the savannah, the same general idea holds as we navigate the urban jungle. Safety can be interpreted in terms of physical safety, but also “sociocultural” safety – we don’t want to put ourselves in positions where we are vulnerable to judgement or ridicule.
The Role of Affect
This is a big topic area in and of itself so I’ll just make one brief point here. Our affective state (how we are feeling as opposed to what we are thinking) influences how we interact with our environment. When in a state of positive affect, we are more open-minded and attuned to big-picture thinking, whereas we focus more on specific details when we are in a state of negative affect (Norman, 2004). This can even affect what we see – we have greater acuity in our peripheral vision when in a state of positive affect. An ironic consequence of this is that people who are lost (and therefore in a state of negative affect) are less likely to see a directional sign if it is not in a place they are expecting to see it.
Implications for Visitor Experiences
While this has been a very superficial review of the theory, a few points should be apparent as a consequence of considering the person-environment interaction as an exchange of information:
Coherent branding and signage:whether visitors arrive off the street on a whim, or have planned beforehand by reading your leaflets or your website, all that information needs to “hang together” to form a coherent whole. They should have a similar look of feel, consistent usage of logos, colour schemes, etc. They then all become recognisable parts of the environment, lending it coherence and meaning there is one less thing to have to process and make sense of. Contrast this to places with signs dating from different eras and different branding strategies, all competing with each other (and often cancelling each other out).
Making places legible and approachable: an entrance should be unambiguously an entrance, ideally affording a view beyond so visitors can be reassured that they’re in the right place, you are open and ready to welcome them (unlike some ultra-modern “statement” buildings where the entrance appears to be strategically hidden for some reason). Not that I want to let traditional museum buildings off the hook here – the vast expanse of big steps up to imposing-looking doors can be a pretty threatening arrival statement too. Check signage sight lines so that it’s provided where it will be seen, particularly by those that are struggling to find you (coherent branding, giving something recognisable to “scan” the environment for will also help here). Ensure people have space where they can plan their visit, decide what tickets to purchase, etc, in a place they don’t feel exposed and scrutinised by staff and fellow visitors.
A museum entrance that doesn’t exactly shout “Welcome! We’re open!”
Challenge but not confuse: none of this is to say we have to make everything easy for visitors in a sense of “dumbing down” (whatever that means). People are information-seekers and that’s the whole reason they’ve visited in the first place. Visitors choose to go to places like the Holocaust Museum expecting to be challenged, and may even say they “enjoyed” their experience. This is an important point – enjoyment is not the same thing as unalloyed delight, it’s the sense that you have participated in something that is enriching and worthwhile. It’s OK to challenge visitors. But it’s a different thing entirely to confuse them unnecessarily through poor design or presentation. There’s no excuse for that.
References
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.
Kaplan, S. (1987). Aesthetics, Affect, and Cognition: Environmental Preference from an Evolutionary Perspective. Environment and Behavior, 19(1), 3–32. doi:10.1177/0013916587191001
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.
Kaplan, S., & Kaplan, R. (2009). Creating a larger role for environmental psychology: The Reasonable Person Model as an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29(3), 329–339. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2008.10.005
Norman, D. A. (2004). Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.
Visiting MONA was my birthday present. An odd choice maybe, but when I clocked up another year back in February I couldn’t think of anything I wanted. But a chance to visit (arguably) Australia’s most talked about museum? I couldn’t pass that up. So in lieu of a gift, my family helped fund a trip to Hobart, which I finally got around to doing earlier this month (I also saw the recently refurbished Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, more on which in a future post).
So . . . what is there write about a place that has already attracted hundreds of column inches already (including some penned by yours truly)?
MONA’s owner/founder David Walsh on the cover of the February 2013 issue of The Monthly.
The problem with visiting such a well-known place is that the answer to the question “so what did you think of it??” is so often “pretty much as I was expecting”. You’ve heard so much, there’s not much room for surprises. That’s still better than when you visit a place and don’t think it lives up to the hype. For me this wasn’t the case, although what I saw vindicated my decision to visit solo (my partner is less than impressed by most contemporary art and I think the whole thing would have just infuriated him).
The other thing is that I think I’m getting really badat being just a visitor and experiencing museums for what they are. My visits have become “meta-visits”: rather than being able to just be in the moment, part of me is always mentally standing back – observing how things are laid out, watching what others were doing, deconstructing my own responses. Occupational hazard I suppose.
To get to MONA I took the ferry, which I think is the usual way for tourists to get there. And this is where the MONA experience starts. There is a dedicated terminal and ferry, the MONA Roma, which is decked out in the sort of irreverent fashion you’d expect given MONA’s “brand”:
On board the MONA ferry. Graffiti art adorns the stairs while model cows and sheep (which double as seating) adorn the deck.
So the ferry doubles as a mode of transport and a (pre-) entrance statement – something akin to what Falk and Dierking would call an “advance organiser”. And while I didn’t realise it at the time, I think this pre-experience had an impact on how I approached the museum visit itself. But more on that later.
Upon arrival we were escorted up the stairs from the dock and into the museum, heading back down again to start the visit at B3 level (three levels underground). Here we were given our “O” devices to guide us on our visit (more on those below). In the distance I could hear some periodic pumping and hissing which added to a sense of anticipation / apprehension (it turned out to be Julius Popp’s Bit.Fall which spells out words in falling water droplets). I turned a corner and found myself heading down a long corridor, lined with red velvet drapes that made me feel like I was walking into a scene from Twin Peaks. Heading out of this area I went up some industrial-type steel stairs that intersect at odd angles across the void, exhibits in view in semi-darkness above and below. Here the feel is more like the video game Half-Life (pop-culture references came to mind readily for some reason!).
Mid-way along this level the corridor narrows, with small galleries off to each side. One of these works is Brigita Ozolins’ Kryptos – an eerie-feeling room-within-a-room-within-a room that you meander into like a labyrinth.
Brigita Ozolins work Kryptos
This work brought out the environmental psychologist in me – the darkness, confined space and the lighting effects creating the sense of a floating floor all worked together to give me a real sense of trepidation about walking in (even as my rational side was telling me there was no real reason to fear). It was interesting to see how this environment was able to elicit such a visceral response in me (there I go, meta-visiting again . . .) Shortly after leaving this space, the corridor opened out into a wide open space covering two levels. After such a sense of confinement, this sense of openness an relative light (it was still pretty dark) provided a sense of welcome relief. I wonder if it’s just me, or if this orchestration of emotion was a deliberate move on the part of the architect.
The open space featuring Sidney Nolan’s “snake” along the wall
From Driver to Passenger – going along for the ride
I’ve written a couple of times this year about how some visitors like to know where they are at in a museum’s spatial and content narrative, whereas others are happy to go with the flow. I’m usually in the former but at MONA, I was happy to surrender myself to the experience more than I usually do. That raises the question – why?
I had a chance to give this a bit of thought during a workshop held as part of the Museums Australia conference in Canberra last week. I’ll flesh this out in more detail in a later post, but I started to think about how we “cast” ourselves in a visitor experience – do we like to be in control (a driver) or surrender to the experience (a passenger)?*
Reflecting on my own experiences, I’ve decided that in most cases I like to drive. But in this instance, I decided to be a passenger. I think that was partly because of some specific circumstances, and partly because my expectations of MONA were different from those of a “typical” museum.
Although they have visitor maps, I didn’t actually pick one up upon entry (they escorted us, the first ferry arrivals of the day, in a way that we bypassed the main ticket desk which is where they are located). So I only had the “O” device to guide me, and while this does have a map function, I didn’t feel overly worried about using it. I only picked up a map towards the end of my visit, just to double-check there wasn’t anything I had inadvertently missed.
As I said before, I’m also wondering if the ferry ride had a role to play in all this, by providing a temporal separation between the first sense of arrival (embarking on the ferry) and getting into the museum experience proper. Once you were on the ferry, all the logistics of worrying about whether you were in the right place, had the right ticket, etc. etc were behind you and you were – literally – cast in the role of passenger. Did this make it easier for me to be a passenger during the visit itself?
The “O”
Anyone who has read anything about MONA will know that they have no labels. Instead, you are given a device called the “O”, which is essentially an ipod touch made location-aware by wifi transmitters installed around the museum. I already knew a bit about how this worked (having researched it for an article I wrote back in 2011), so it was interesting to have a go and see how it worked in practice. Generally speaking it worked quite well, and it does offer quite a different experience to that with standard labels.
As you move around the museum, the O lists works which are near to you and you can select them to read a standard label (these are titled “artwank”) or more atypical musings (titled “gonzo” or “ideas”). You are also invited to “love” or “hate” works and when you do so, you find out how many other visitors felt the same way. Not all labels are accompanied by audio but some works were pieced with music which I thought was an interesting idea, and one which had me lingering longer at some works than I otherwise would have.
A couple of things about using the O though – while each work had an identifying thumbnail image, sometimes it took a while to find the corresponding piece of work because of scale – the work you were looking for might be a tiny thing in a peephole, or a giant installation hanging overhead. Also (and this might just be me) I found the O gave me an obsession with “collecting” all the works in a particular area before moving on – I wanted to mark everything as “seen” in a way I wouldn’t have worried about with just regular labels.
If you enter your email address, you get sent a summary of your visit as recorded by the O. This is a screengrab of mine, which shows my visit in impressive detail. It’s also interesting to see how the visit unfolded over time. Oh how I would love to get hold of all of MONA’s visitor data!!
Technically speaking, the O worked well overall – in some instances the location got a little confused, but this was easily fixed by pressing a reset button. The only thing is, I think my device didn’t record all of my visit. Going through the summary, I noticed a number of works that the website says I “missed”, when I know I did in fact visit it. Looking at what’s been missed, I wonder if I accidentally reset something when I nipped into the loo because it doesn’t seem to have recorded anything I visited after that. Oh well.
*Extending the metaphor, you might end up being a “backseat driver” when an experience affords you less control than you’d like.
I’ve now collected a grand total of 444 questionnaires for my PhD research (not including pilot samples) – which is not far off my target sample of 450-500. Just a few more to go! Based on my experiences, I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way . . .
Paper or Tablet?
My survey was a self-complete questionnaire (as opposed to an interviewer-led survey) that visitors filled out while on the exhibition floor. During piloting I tried both paper surveys and an electronic version on an ipad, but ended up opting for the paper version as I think the pros outweighed the cons for my purposes.
The big upside of tablet based surveys is that there is no need for manual data entry as a separate step – survey programs like Qualtrics can export directly into an SPSS file for analysis. And yes, manually entering data from paper surveys into a statistics program is time-consuming, tedious and a potential source of error. The other advantage of a tablet-based survey (or any electronic survey for that matter) is that you can set up rules that prompt people to answer questions they may have inadvertently skipped, automatically randomise the order of questions to control for ordering effects, and so on. So why did I go the other way?
First of all, time is a trade off: with paper surveys, I could recruit multiple people to complete the survey simultaneously – all I needed was a few more clipboards and pencils and plenty of comfortable seating nearby. Whereas I only had one tablet, which meant only one person could be completing my survey at a time. By the time you take into account the time saved from being able to collect far more paper surveys in a given time compared to the tablet, I think I’m still in front doing the manual data entry. Plus I’m finding doing the data entry manually is a useful first point of analysis, particularly during the piloting stages when you’re looking to see where the survey design flaws are.
Secondly, I think many visitors were more comfortable using the old-fashioned paper surveys. They could see at a glance how long the survey was and how much further they had to go, whereas this was less transparent on the ipad (even though I had a progress bar).
This doesn’t mean I would never use a tablet – I think they’d be particularly useful for interviewer-led surveys where you can only survey one participant at a time anyway, or large scale surveys with multiple interviewers and tablets in use.
Refining the recruitment “spiel”
People are understandably wary of enthusiastic-looking clipboard-bearers – after all, they’re usually trying to sell or sign you up to something. In my early piloting I think my initial approach may have come across as too “sales-y”, so I refined it such that the first thing I said was that I am a student. My gut feel is that this immediately made people less defensive and more willing to listen to the rest of my “spiel” for explaining the study and recruiting participants. Saying I was a student doing some research made it clear up front that I was interested in what they had to say, not in sales or spamming.
Response, Refusal and Attrition Rates
Like any good researcher should, I kept a fieldwork journal while I was out doing my surveys. In this I documented everyone I approached, approximately what time I did so, whether they took a participant information sheet or refused, and if they refused, what reason (if any) they gave for doing so. During busy periods, recording all this got a bit chaotic so some pages of notes are more intelligible than others, but over a period of time I evolved a shorthand for noting the most important things. The journal was also a place to document general facts about the day (what the weather was like, whether there was a cruise ship in town that day, times when large numbers of school groups dominated the exhibition floor, etc.). Using this journal, I’ve been able to look at what I call my response, refusal and attrition rates.
Response rate: the proportion of visitors (%) I approached who eventually returned a survey
Refusal rate: the proportion of visitors (%) approached who refused my invitation to participate when I approached them
Attrition rate:this one is a little specific to my particular survey method and wouldn’t always be relevant. I wanted people to complete the survey after they had finished looking around the exhibition, but for practical reasons could not do a traditional “exit survey” method (since there’s only one of me, I couldn’t simultaneously cover all the exhibition exits). So, as an alternative, I approached visitors on the exhibition floor, invited them to participate and gave them a participant information sheet if they accepted my invitation. As part of the briefing I asked them to return to a designated point once they had finished looking around the exhibition, at which point I gave them the questionnaire to fill out [1]. Not everyone who initially accepted a participant information sheet came back to complete the survey. These people I class as the attrition rate.
So my results were as follows: I approached a total of 912 visitors, of whom 339 refused to participate, giving an average refusal rate of 36.8%. This leaves 573 who accepted a participant information sheet. Of these, 444 (77%) came back and completed a questionnaire, giving me an overall average response rate of (444/912) 49.4%. The attrition rate as a percentage of those who initially agreed to participate is therefore 23%, or, if you’d rather, 14% of the 912 people initially approached.
So is this good, bad or otherwise? Based on some data helpfully provided by Carolyn Meehan at Museum Victoria, I can say it’s probably at least average. Their average refusal rate is a bit under 50% – although it varies by type of survey, venue (Museum Victoria has three sites) and interviewer (some interviewers have a higher success rate than others).
Reasons for Refusal
While not everyone gave a reason for not being willing to participate (and they were under no obligation to do so), many did, and often apologetically so. Across my sample as a whole, reasons for refusal were as follows:
Not enough time 24%
Poor / no English: 19%
Child related: 17%
Others / No reason given: 39%
Again, these refusal reasons are broadly comparable to those experienced by Museum Victoria, with the possible exception that my refusals included a considerably higher proportion of non-English speakers. It would appear that the South Australian Museum attracts a lot of international tourists or other non-English speakers, at least during the period I was doing surveys.
Improving the Response Rate
As noted above, subtly adjusting the way you approach and invite visitors to participate can have an impact on response rates. But there are some other approaches as well:
Keep the kids occupied: while parents with hyperactive toddlers are unlikely to participate under any circumstances, those with slightly older children can be encouraged if you can offer something to keep the kids occupied for 10 minutes or so. I had some storybooks and some crayons/paper which worked well – in some cases the children were still happily drawing after the parents had completed the survey and the parents were dragging the kids away!
Offer a large print version: it appears that plenty of people leave their reading glasses at home (or in the bag they’ve checked into the cloakroom). Offering a large print version gives these people the option to participate if they wish. Interestingly, however, some people claimed they couldn’t read even the large print version without their glasses. I wonder how they can see anything at all sans spectacles if this is the case . . . then again, perhaps this is a socially acceptable alibi used by people with poor literacy levels?
Comfortable seating: an obvious one. Offer somewhere comfortable to sit down and complete the questionnaire. I think some visitors appreciated the excuse to have a sit and have a break! Depending on your venue, you could also lay out some sweets or glasses of water.
Participant incentives: because I was doing questionnaires on the exhibition floor, putting out food or drink was not an option for me. But I did give everyone who returned a survey a voucher for a free hot drink at the Museum cafe. While I don’t think many (or any) did the survey just for the free coffee, it does send a signal that you value and appreciate your participants’ time.
[1] A potential issue with this approach is cuing bias – people may conceivably behave differently if they know they are going to fill out a questionnaire afterwards. I tried to mitigate this with my briefing, in which I asked visitors to “please continue to look around this exhibition as much or as little as you were going to anyway”, so that visitors did not feel pressure to visit the exhibition more diligently than they may have otherwise. Also, visitors did not actually see the questionnaire before they finished visiting the exhibition – if they asked what it was about, I said it was asking them “how you’d describe this exhibition environment and your experience in it”. In some cases I reassured visitors that it was definitely “not a quiz!”. This is not a perfect approach of course, and I can’t completely dismiss cuing bias as a factor, but any cuing bias would be a constant between exhibition spaces as I used comparable methods in each.
I’ve recently returned from two weeks in China as part of the Student Leadership in International Cooperation project. While most of the trip was spent visiting university campuses, we did manage to fit in some sightseeing. On our first day in Beijing we had a couple of free hours in the afternoon, so we headed to the Forbidden City (otherwise known as the Palace Museum).
It’s a huge site and we were on a tight timeframe – we just managed to buy tickets before the box office closed at 4pm, giving us an hour to make our way through before the site closed at 5pm. We hired the location-aware audioguides that are available in multiple languages:
The audioguide incorporated a map of the Palace Museum using LEDs to indicate your location. Sites still illumianated are those you have yet to get to.
The audioguide was small and light, with minimal controls – basically just volume adjustment and a pause function:
Rear of the audioguide, made by lightour, a Beijing-based company.
The introductory track starts pretty much as soon as they give you the guide – which means I missed it the first time around while I fiddled with the earpiece so that it didn’t keep falling off (an issue exacerbated by the filter mask I was wearing due to the high pollution levels in Beijing that day). I accidentally changed the language by pressing “option”, but was able to scroll through until I was back at English. “Help” restarted the introductory track and then I was back in business.
Overall it worked fairly well and it was useful to have the guide double as a mini-map. However it does not lend itself well to the “walk and look” approach you tend to take when you’re trying to get through a site quickly (like we were). It meant that sometimes the audio description cut out mid-way through because I had moved out of range. There also didn’t seem to be a way of restarting a description if you wanted to. But the location awareness of the device meant that it was pretty much set-and-forget, which is probably a reasonable tradeoff of control for simplicity.
As far as I can tell from the Lightour website (using Google translate as I coudn’t see an English version), it seems that this technology is being used in several tourist sites in China, but apparently nowhere else as yet.
