Insights from Visitor Studies


Book Description

Insights from Visitor Studies: A purpose-oriented model for museums provides a systematic overview of the value of visitor studies and, for the first time in English, a comprehensive overview of the development of visitor studies in mainland China. This book emphasizes the importance of approaching visitor studies with a focus on purpose-oriented way and introduces the PSD model based on it. Zhao suggests that when museums aim to use the results of visitor research to gain support, or when they want to conduct a visitor evaluation to address a specific issue, they can follow the logical sequence of Purpose, Standpoint, and Dimension for analysis and identification. This approach will help museums derive maximum value from previous research or enhance the effectiveness of evaluations in practice. Throughout this process, Zhao not only consolidates literature from various cultural backgrounds into a unified framework, but also strives to incorporate existing terminology from the field of visitor studies to the greatest extent possible. Insights from Visitor Studies: A purpose-oriented model for museums examines the value of visitor studies for museum practice. It will be of great interest to museum practitioners to design transparent visitor research and evaluation practices. It will also assist academics and students engaged in the study of museums, heritage and tourism.




Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience


Book Description

Drawing upon a career in studying museum visitors, renowned researcher John Falk attempts to create a predictive model of visitor experience, one that can help museum professionals better meet those visitors’ needs.




Social Design in Museums


Book Description

This major two-volume, 900-page collection of essays distils the exceptional insights and advice of one of the world's leading thinkers in the field of visitor studies, Stephen Bitgood, a pioneer in the field of social design.Spanning both theory and practice, Social Design in Museums is guaranteed to have museum and heritage professionals thinking afresh about the fundamentals of their organisation's interface with the public. Its contents are crucial to an understanding of the learning process within these institutions - and an essential step towards enhancing their effectiveness. Social Design in Museums brings together a selection of Stephen Bitgood's key essays, complete with contemporary updates, resulting in a practical, comprehensive reference handbook for professionals in those specialisms which contribute to effective museum communication: including design, learning, curatorship, visitor studies and marketing.Dr Bitgood is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Jacksonville State University, USA. A founder of the Visitor Studies Association, and of the Visitor Studies Conference, and co-editor of Visitor Studies: Theory, Research and Practice, he hasspoken and published widely and has undertaken extensive researchin exhibition centres (museums, science centres and zoos) focusing on how to increase the impact of exhibits by applying psychological principles. The two volumes include practical, down-to-earth advice on topics such as: how best to check the readability of exhibition texts, and how to formulate questions and sample your audience to get useful results; as well as time-saving summaries of the key results from important visitor research studies.




Engaging the Visitor: Designing Exhibits That Work


Book Description

Engaging the Visitor addresses some of the most fundamental issues relating to interpretation, exhibition design and the visitor experience, in a format which is attractive, approachable - and above all actionable. Challenging many preconceptions, this book is firmly rooted in the results of museum-based scientific research. Deep and effective engagement with exhibit content is still the exception in very many museums. When most visitors pass an exhibit with only a glance, it will fail to engage. And until the visitor is engaged no informal learning - or any other satisfying experience - will happen... This book will help you answer such questions as: How often do visitors really engage with the content of the exhibitions in our museum? Why do our visitors engage with some of our exhibits and not others? How can we increase our visitors' engagement through better exhibit design?




Ignite the Power of Art


Book Description

The Dallas Museum of Art undertook a groundbreaking seven-year research initiative to answer these questions. The findings, published in Ignite the Power of Art, support a new understanding of art museum visitors based on their differing preferences, behaviors, and interactions with art. The publication describes how these studies have been used at the Dallas Museum of Art to build attendance. enhance exhibitions and collections, and develop new programs such as the Center for Creative Connections, the online Arts Network, and the Late Nights event series. The book also shows how this research has transformed the Museum, unleashing a profound change in institutional thinking and paving the way for sustained innovation. Also included are contributions by community leaders who offer their perspectives and insights on the Dallas Museum of Art's remarkable revitalization. --Book Jacket.




Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience


Book Description

Exhibition environments are enticingly complex spaces: as facilitators of experience; as free-choice learning contexts; as theaters of drama; as encyclopedic warehouses of cultural and natural heritage; as two-, three- and four-dimensional storytellers; as sites for self-actualizing leisure activity. But how much do we really know about the moment-by-moment transactions that comprise the intricate experiences of visitors? To strengthen the disciplinary knowledge base supporting exhibition design, we must understand more about what ‘goes on’ as people engage with the multifaceted communication environments that are contemporary exhibition spaces. The in-depth, visitor-centered research underlying this book offers nuanced understandings of the interface between visitors and exhibition environments. Analysis of visitors’ meaning-making accounts shows that the visitor experience is contingent upon four processes: framing, resonating, channeling, and broadening. These processes are distinct, yet mutually influencing. Together they offer an evidence-based conceptual framework for understanding visitors in exhibition spaces. Museum educators, designers, interpreters, curators, researchers, and evaluators will find this framework of value in both daily practice and future planning. Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience provides museum professionals and academics with a fresh vocabulary for understanding what goes on as visitors wander around exhibitions.




Visitor Experience at Holocaust Memorials and Museums


Book Description

Visitor Experience at Holocaust Memorials and Museums is the first volume to offer comprehensive insights into visitor reactions to a wide range of museum exhibitions, memorials, and memory sites. Drawing exclusively upon empirical research, chapters within the book offer critical insights about visitor experience at museums and memory sites in the United States, Poland, Austria, Germany, France, the UK, Norway, Hungary, Australia, and Israel. The contributions to the volume explore visitor experience in all its complexity and argue that visitors are more than just "learners". Approaching visitor experience as a multidimensional phenomenon, the book positions visitor experience within a diverse national, ethnic, cultural, social, and generational context. It also considers the impact of museums’ curatorial and design choices, visitor motivations and expectations, and the crucial role emotions play in shaping understanding of historical events and subjects. By approaching visitors as active interpreters of memory spaces and museum exhibitions, Popescu and the contributing authors provide a much-needed insight into the different ways in which members of the public act as "agents of memory", endowing this history with personal and collective meaning and relevance. Visitor Experience at Holocaust Memorials and Museums offers significant insights into audience motivation, expectation, and behaviour. It is essential reading for academics, postgraduate students and practitioners with an interest in museums and heritage, visitor studies, Holocaust and genocide studies, and tourism.




Museum Experience Revisited


Book Description

The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit, updated to incorporate advances in research, theory, and practice in the museum field over the last twenty years.




Reaching and Responding to the Audience


Book Description

Museums exist to serve their audiences; however, the scope of this charge is constantly being challenged and changed. This book looks at new roles small museums have taken as they find ways to become irreplaceable members of the community, engaging with and advocating for their audience—from large-scale marketing and public relations efforts to welcome signs and entrances. Book Five encourages small museums to examine their audiences and make them comfortable, program to their needs and interests, and spread the word about the museum’s good work. It also features several case studies of successful evaluation programs, sample press releases, accessibility checklists, visitor experience checklists and more.




Emotional Heritage


Book Description

Emotional Heritage brings the issues of affect and power in the theorisation of heritage to the fore, whilst also highlighting the affective and political consequences of heritage-making. Drawing on interviews with visitors to museums and heritage sites in the United States, Australia and England, Smith argues that obtaining insights into how visitors use such sites enables us to understand the impact and consequences of professional heritage and museological practices. The concept of registers of engagement is introduced to assess variations in how visitors use museums and sites that address national or dissonant histories and the political consequences of their use. Visitors are revealed as agents in the roles cultural institutions play in maintaining or challenging the political and social status quo. Heritage is, Smith argues, about people and their social situatedness and the meaning they, alongside or in concert with cultural institutions, make and mobilise to help them address social problems and expressions of identity and sense of place in and for the present. Academics, students and practitioners interested in theories of power and affect in museums and heritage sites will find Emotional Heritage to be an invaluable resource. Helping professionals to understand the potential impact of their practice, the book also provides insights into the role visitors play in the interplay between heritage and politics.