Re-Thinking the Museum Visitor Experience

John H. FalkSea Grant Free-Choice Learning Professor

Oregon State University

Key Questions for Today• Why do people visit museums? 

• What do visitors do inside the museum and why?

• What meanings do visitors take away from their museum visit? 

• If we knew the answers to these questions, how could we use them to improve museum practice?

Some Important Definitions• Museum – any of a number of free-choice

learning settings such as art, history and natural history museums, zoos, aquariums, science centers, natural area parks, botanical gardens, arboretums, etc.

• Identity – both internal and external – how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. – We don’t have just one identity but multiple

identities; situated within the realities of physical and socio-cultural world.

– We have both “I” identities and “i” identities.

Most efforts to describe and understand museums and their visitors have begun and ended inside the “four walls” of the museum.

Most efforts to describe and understand museums and their visitors have focused on PERMANENT qualities of either the: MUSEUM – content or style of exhibits VISITOR – age, race/ethnicity, visit frequency or social arrangement.

The museum visitor experience is not something tangible and immutable but rather an ephemeral,

constructed relationship that uniquely occurs each time a person visits a museum.

Museum visitor experience extends beyond the museum’s spatial and temporal boundaries.

BEFORE VISIT AFTER VISIT

Big Break-Through Was Realizing Why Visitors REALLY Come to Museums

• Visitors come in order to fulfill specific, personal identity-related needs.

• Identity-related needs are made “visible” through descriptions of visit motivations/expectations.

Identity-Related Visit Motivations

An individual’s visit motivations represent a contextually-specific construct, intimately bound to desires for personal satisfaction.

• Identity-related motivations are based upon the ways the public (currently) perceive the attributes and value of museums.

What Happens at the MuseumAs we’ve learned over many years, the museum visit is shaped by the visitor’s Personal, Socio-Cultural and Physical Contexts.

A visitor’s identity-related visit motivation(s) creates a basic

trajectory for the visit.

WHY someone comes to the museum shapes WHAT he/she finds interesting & important.

Long-Term Impact of Experience

• Why a person comes to the museum not only shapes what s/he does in the museum but also his/ her long-term memories and the meanings created about the experience.

So Why Do People Come to Museums?

Explorer

Motivated by Personal CuriosityMotivated by Personal Curiosity

I came here primarily because it interested me and I thought I’d

like it..

Facilitator

Motivated by Other People

I came here primarily because others would

like it or wanted to come.

Experience Seeker

Motivated by Desire to See & Experience Place

I came here because it was an attraction or

thing to do in this community; its

reputation.

Professional/Hobbyist

Motivated by Specific Knowledge-Related GoalsMotivated by Specific Knowledge-Related Goals

I came here primarily because it relates to my work or is

something I actively pursue as a hobby.

Recharger

Motivated by Contemplative or

Restorative Experience

I came here primarily because it will help

me feel refreshed or focused or

appreciative

What My Research Shows:

• The majority of visitors to all kinds of museums can be successfully categorized as visiting for one, or some combination, of these five identity-related reasons.

Individuals with similar motivations have qualitatively similar visit experiences and long-term patterns of long-term meaning making.

One Example: The California Science Center, L.A.

Motivations Percent Facilitators 41% Explorers 34% Professional/Hobbyist 7% Recharger 6% Experience Seeker 3% Other 10%

Long-Term Learning by Identity

Implications for Practice

Identity-related motivations do not answer all aspects of:

* Why visitors come? * What they do in museum?

* What they take away?

However, a wide range of museum functions can benefit by using this perspective, e.g.:

Education & Exhibt Design

Marketing & Visitor Services

Education & Exhibit Design:

• By knowing visitor’s entering identity-related visit motivations we can better customize the museum visit experience and provide each visitor what s/he really wants.

• Since the same visitors can come for different reasons on different days, it’s not about creating different exhibits & programs, it’s about creating different visitor experiences.

Marketing & Visitor Services:

Visitors’ identity-related motivations provide direct clues as to how the public currently perceives the benefits of our museum and why they showed up at our door this particular day.

Visitors’ identity-related motivations help us understand why visitors ARE CURRENTLY coming to our museums. They also tells us why people DO NOT CURRENTLY visit.