Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience

Creating museums that work for visitors requires changing how we think about visitors and museum exhibits and programs. We need to stop seeing these as parts of a whole and start seeing them as a single complex, integrated system. Specifically, we need to move away from thinking about types of visitors to types of visits (which vary by identity-related motivations), and from exhibits and programs with specific, singular outcomes to ways of experiencing and using exhibits and programs that allow visitors to achieve multiple, personally relevant goals.

The key to ensuring that visitors leave our museums as satisfied customers, eager to return as well as give positive word-of-mouth recommendations, is to provide high-quality, personally engaging museum visit experiences. What makes a museum visitor experience high-quality and personally engaging is that it fully satisfies the visitor’s entering identity-related museum motivations. As museum researcher Zahava Doering wrote,

Rather than communicating new information, the primary impact of visiting a museum exhibition is to confirm, reinforce, and extend the visitor’s existing beliefs …. [the] most satisfying exhibition[s] for visitors are those that resonate with their experience and provide new information in ways that confirm and enrich their [own] view of the world.¹

Museum experiences like these help visitors feel competent and satisfied so that they will repeat the activity. This process of feeling competent and successful is referred to in the psychology literature as self-efficacy.² Self-efficacy beliefs play a strong role in mediating between prior experiences and future decision making, essentially serving as a filter to determine what is worth engaging in again.³ In other words, people are much more likely to re-engage in activities about which they feel competent and good. Within the context of the museum visitor experience, this appears to be continually anchored in the visitor’s entering identity-related visit motivations, particularly, in the visitor’s mental articulation and satisfaction of their self-aspects.

For example, individuals with an Explorer motivation are more likely to feel a sense of self-efficacy after having museum visitor experiences that reinforced their self-perception as curious individuals who like to see and learn about new and interesting things. Facilitators are most likely to feel self-efficacious if they perceived that their museum visitor experience supported their self-perception as supportive people who provide a positive experience for a significant other. Helping visitors satisfy their entering identity-related visit motivations turns out to be fundamental to the long-term success of a museum. So many visitors, so many self-aspects, so many diverse visitor needs!

If there is a single theme in this book, it is that the museum visitor experience is neither about visitors nor about museum exhibitions and programs; it is about the dynamic interaction of these as they briefly come together in space and time. Despite the uniqueness and diversity of visitors and their needs and the wide range of museum topics and ways to present content, much of this complex phenomenon can be organized and dealt with by viewing the museum visitor experience through the lens of the public’s entering identity-related needs. The five categories of visit identity-related motivations I have defined earlier provide a useful filter for understanding and predicting much of the museum visitor experience. However, as I have pointed out, reality is more complex than just these five motivations. Knowing a person’s entering identity-related motivation provides only part of what is required to meet his or her museum visitor experience needs, but it is an important place to start. As outlined in Chapter 4, a person’s visit motivations, shaped by their identity-related needs and their perceptions of what the museum affords, create a basic trajectory for a visit, but that trajectory is shaped by a range of other factors, most of which can be understood through the framework provided by the Contextual Model of Learning. The number of factors that could potentially directly or indirectly influence a visitor’s in-museum experience probably number in the hundreds, if not thousands. However, after considering the data from hundreds of research studies, Lynn Dierking and I concluded that in addition to a visitor’s entering motivations and expectations and subsequent reinforcing experiences, ten factors, or more accurately suites of factors, are particularly influential.⁴ These ten factors are:

Personal Context

1. Prior knowledge

2. Prior experiences

3. Prior interests

4. Choice and control

Socio-cultural Context

5. Within group social mediation

6. Mediation by others outside the immediate social group

Physical Context

7. Advance organizers

8. Orientation to the physical space

9. Architecture and large-scale environment

10. Design and exposure to exhibits and programs

An in-depth investigation by my colleague Martin Storksdieck and me confirmed that all of these factors do influence the museum visitor experience, but that not all factors equally influence all visitors.⁵ For some visitors, factors such as social interaction or exhibit quality seemed to dramatically affect their experience and learning, for other visitors these same factors assumed little or no obvious significance. Understanding why this was true and for whom emerged as critical to making progress towards better meeting visitor needs. This is where understanding something about a visitor’s entering identity-related motivations provides us with some guidance. A visitor’s entering identity-related motivation provides a reasonable way to know which factors are likely to be important for which visitors—not all of the time, but frequently enough to be a useful planning tool. What follows are my informed, and at times, educated guesses as to which factors are most likely to be most important for fulfilling the needs of visitors with different entering visit motivations.

ACCOMMODATING THE NEEDS OF VISITORS

Needs of Explorers

As often described in this book, individuals with an Explorer visitor motivation are seeking to satisfy their personal interests and curiosities. Since Explorers often comprise a large percentage of a museum’s visiting population, figuring out how to meet this group of visitors’ needs should be a high priority for most museums. In many ways, Explorers are like serious shoppers or habitués of flea markets; they love to browse and bump into intellectual “bargains.” Like any serious shopper, they begin with a generalized rather than a specific sense of what they’re looking for as some things are more likely to catch their eye and be more attractive than others. Their visit pathway is unlikely to be fully linear, and to the outside observer it might even appear “illogical.” However, there’s nothing illogical about how Explorers utilize museums; their pathway and behavior makes perfect sense if we are mindful of what they’re trying to accomplish. If you know something about an Explorer’s personal context variables such as their prior experience, knowledge, and interest, their pathways through the museum makes perfect sense.

Given our current capabilities, it might seem a daunting task to try and customize the museum visitor experience based upon knowing the prior knowledge, experience, and interest of each individual visitor. However, we can make great progress by realizing that for this group of visitors these factors are important and that they will strongly shape their experience. Our goal should be to design exhibitions, programs, and interpretive tools that make it easy for the Explorer to explore. Let’s take, for example, the interpretive tools of guided tours and audio guides. Although Explorers are likely to value the information contained in these interpretive tools, most currently shy away from them because they believe that these tools will be too structured and will actually prevent, rather than assist, their curiosity-driven exploration. However, if these tools can be designed to be flexible and responsive to the individual’s specific needs and interests, then they might be very satisfying to this type of visitor. It may require, for example, creating several different versions of a tour, but in all instances it will require a change in the way these tools are promoted to visitors. Visitors with different needs should realize that the museum has taken these traditional tools and redesigned them to accommodate their needs. This is an important first step towards customizing the museum visitor experience.

This brings us back to the importance of the personal context variables. Given the important role played by prior knowledge, experience, and interest for Explorers, exhibition designers would be well-served by conducting front-end evaluations to help determine some key “hooks” for this group of visitors. The caveat is that these front-end information collection efforts cannot be successful only by talking to a random sampling of visitors, but should be targeted specifically at Explorers. This will help to ensure that the Explorer visitor can find what he or she is looking for; it will also help the museum achieve its educational goals by helping them know how to frame and present arguments and conceptual themes.

The Explorer visitor population is the most likely to read labels, brochures, and guides and to achieve the kinds of learning outcomes museums tend to claim for their visitors. Of course, they’ll be selective in which sections they engage in. Explorers know that they can’t read everything, so they’ll be judicious but thorough in what they do read. As suggested above, predicting what an Explorer will find interesting is challenging because so much of their curiosity is driven by their own personal prior experience and knowledge. However, they are not disinterested in what the museum professionals think is important. If exhibitions and programs are mindful of the Explorer visitors’ interests and prior knowledge, museums can create experiences that meet them halfway and help move this group of visitors towards satisfactory learning outcomes.

New technologies also offer museums unprecedented opportunities to meet the needs and interests of visitors with an Exploring motivation. These technologies allow for greater flexibility in what and when information is presented and offer the visitor significantly more choice and control over content than a typical silk-screened label on the wall. The “kiss of death” for an Explorer is to encounter text and labels that they find too simple or basic. The label that works great for a Facilitator or Experience seeker is likely not to work for an Explorer. Again, this emphasizes the current challenges of trying to be “all things for all people” with a medium that has limited flexibility. Given the rigidity of wall text, one strategy that has proven effective is the creative use of layered labels, with a simple, large-print sentence followed by more in-depth information designed for Explorers. Ideally, this information could be supported by touch-screen computers rather than cluttering up walls or text panels.

Since Explorers are typically repeat-visitors to their local museum, they require very little orientation support or guidance when visiting. However, when visiting a museum for the first time while traveling, they will likely be very demanding and in need of good maps, orientation signage, and knowledgeable and responsive floor staff. When visiting a new museum, Explorers are not likely to start at the “beginning” and proceed in an orderly fashion, but they are likely to have a general sense of their area(s) of interest and know that they can go directly to this area. Consequently, they want to get there as quickly and efficiently as possible and their expectation is that the museum will, and should support them in this effort.

Most museum visitors learn as much from their social group as they do from the exhibitions and programs; this is also somewhat true of Explorers. As the previous examples in this book illustrate, many individuals with an Explorer motivation are as likely to navigate through the museum by themselves as they are with others, but almost all arrive with a social group and will want to spend some of their time interacting with others. Compared to other groups of visitors, supporting in-exhibition social facilitation is less important with this group. Whereas many visitors are likely to interact with museum staff primarily for directions to the restrooms or café, Explorers are thrilled when they encounter a knowledgeable staff person with whom they can interact and ask questions about the content of the exhibition. A museum that is mindful and attentive to the needs of Explorers will try to proactively help facilitate these kinds of interactions. Every museum’s goal should be to learn the name and interests of their regular Explorer visitors and enter into a personalized relationship with them so that each visit can be designed to appropriately challenge and continually push their understanding. I had this model in mind while writing the introduction to Thriving in the Knowledge Age, where an entire family, with the help of technology, could be encouraged to come back week after week to build upon their own individual interests and knowledge.⁶ With museum encouragement and support, the Explorers could be transformed into Professional/Hobbyists.

Individuals with Explorer-style motivations are also likely to be among the most regular patrons of the non-exhibit aspects of the museum. Not only will they attend lectures and programs, but they will typically visit the café. This is a group who will need to be recharged during their visit. Whereas many visitors will use the café as a final stop before departing, Explorers are likely to use the café as a mid-point, resting up and refueling before heading back into the galleries for more viewing. Since these individuals tend to be regular and sophisticated visitors, they want good value for their money—the McDonald’s experience is not what they had in mind!

Explorers will also be regular users of the gift shop. They won’t be looking for trinkets and souvenirs but books on the topic of the museum’s exhibits or something more substantial. They, like all visitors, see the gift shop as an integral part of their visit experience. Explorers, in particular, will be seeking to find something that will extend their visit and their new-found interests. If an Explorer discovered something interesting about nineteenth-century life while “cruising through” an exhibition, he or she will now want to read more and expect to be able to find an appropriate book in the gift shop. If unsuccessful in the gift shop, he or she will be frustrated and disappointed. A good gift shop manager thus will anticipate these needs and go out of his or her way to accommodate the interests of this group of visitors, even perhaps offering to order books to help satisfy the needs and curiosity of the intellectually-intrepid Explorer.

It is not unusual for Explorers to use the end of one visit to scout out possible topics and exhibits to see on their next visit. They assume that they’re coming back and appreciate that their in-museum time and attention are finite, so they will take advantage of their current visit to store up ideas for the next visit. If the museum is aware, the staff could help the Explorer by interacting with them towards the end of their visit in order to let them know what might be interesting to see on their next visit; “Did you happen to see the X? We just got that in. You’ll definitely want to see that next time you come.”

Needs of Facilitators

Facilitators are visitors who arrive at the museum with a strong desire to support what’s best for their loved one or companion. The museum that helps ensure a positive experience for this loved one or companion helps ensure that the Facilitator’s experience will also be positive. As mentioned in the previous chapter, it’s best to think of Facilitators as two variations—Facilitating Parents and Facilitating Socializers. Let’s start with Facilitating Parents; what are the needs of parents and how can museums best support their needs? To have a successful visit, the parental Facilitator needs to occupy, stimulate, and engage their children. As for Explorers, prior knowledge, experience, and interest are important to them, but in the Facilitating Parent’s situation, the prior knowledge and interests of their children, rather than their own, are most important. The typical Facilitating parent uses their understanding of their children to help guide the museum visit experience and support their children’s learning and enjoyment.

It would serve the museum staff well to also know something about the Facilitating adult’s prior knowledge and experience, although their knowledge and experience in using museums to support learning are more critical than their knowledge and experience with the content of the museum. The average Facilitating Parent can benefit from some guidance about how best to support their children’s museum visitor experience. Many museums have created family guides or backpacks designed to provide this kind of support. These are certainly an excellent strategy, particularly if the entering parent is made aware that such services are available. It’s also worth noting that not every parent who enters the museum is there primarily to be a Facilitator. Thus, the museum needs to create opportunity for parents to self-select interpretive support, but not assume that such support will or should be utilized.

Once in the museum, Facilitating Parents will typically rush into the visit since they’re usually trying to keep up with their children, who naturally are quite excited about being there. Thus, any signage or orientation materials need to be designed to be seen and internalized quickly, literally “on the fly.” After all, who has time to ask for directions or suggestions when they are trying to keep up with their children who are sprinting ahead? Since Facilitating Parents may not know which of the exhibits on display would be ideal for their children, signage that indicates those which are “child-friendly” would make great sense, particularly in a museum that isn’t overtly child-friendly. Of course, the parent facilitating the experience needs to know that such signage exists and if there is a symbol, what the symbol means.

Facilitators with children often read labels primarily so that they can have sufficient information to support the needs of their children. Most Facilitating Parents work hard to translate and interpret the museum’s exhibits for their children. Thus, helping adults play this role successfully should be a major goal of the museum. Conceptual advance organizers—information that allows an individual to know the big idea of an exhibition or exhibit element—are essential tools for Facilitating Parents. Placing this information in several places throughout an exhibition can make a huge difference in the likelihood that it will be seen, internalized, and used by the Facilitator.⁷ If your museum attracts a high percentage of Facilitators with children, specific signage that helps parents interpret exhibits at an appropriate development level would be a real benefit. What would be wrong with having some labels written for young children, some for older children, and some for adolescents and adults as this is a situation where one “solution” is unlikely to work equally well for all visitors. There are also other ideas besides labels that museums can realize in order to support parents who are facilitating the experiences of their children. Museum researcher Minda Borun and her Philadelphia-based collaborators conducted a series of research studies on families in museums and suggested a range of strategies that museums can implement to better meet the needs of family visitors. They include the redesign of spaces and the use of interactives to better accommodate groups rather than just individuals.⁸ Good exhibition design appears to be particularly important for the Facilitator Parent group of visitors, but as suggested above, the design issues of importance primarily are inter-generational interactions and labels that support parental involvement rather than lighting or placement of objects.

In institutions that attract many Facilitating Parents and their children, having friendly and knowledgeable floor staff who can relate well to the children, but also to multiage groups of adults and children, are essential. Many Facilitators will interact with floor staff primarily for directions to the restrooms or café since these necessities are high on their facilitating priority list. Having museum staff who can go the extra distance and help facilitate the learning experience will be greatly appreciated. Parents also love demonstrations, particularly those that include their children as volunteers. These are the kinds of high emotion experiences that are likely to be memorable for both child and adult for years to come. If a Facilitating Parent’s child shows an interest, however fleeting, in the content of the museum, the Facilitator will happily sign their child up for additional programs in order to extend the good feelings of helping their child succeed in life. Take note that behind every child enrolled in a museum program is a Facilitating Parent!

Individuals with a Facilitating Socializer motivation represent a very interesting group of visitors. Since the visitor experience will likely revolve around the “chosen” adult, the basic trajectory and tenor of the visit will depend upon what kind of visitor that individual is with. If the “other” is an Explorer, then the visit will fit an Explorer model. If the “other” is an Experience seeker, then it will follow that model. If the “other” is also a Facilitator, then the two adults are likely to spend their time strolling through the museum chatting with each other about everything except, perhaps, the exhibits on display! In this book’s opening vignette, I presented an example of this socializing in the visit of George and his father in-law to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Both were happy to use the space and time to chat and catch up with each other rather than to look at fish and aquatic mammals.

Meeting the needs of a Facilitating Socializer is relatively easy. Since these Facilitators are primarily using the museum as a stage for their social agenda, the museum should keep the “stage” clean, friendly, and accommodating and create quiet and inviting spaces in order to generally support the visitor’s social agenda. Often the most important parts of the “stage” may be the non-exhibit amenities of the museum such as the food service and restrooms. Facilitators, like Explorers, are likely to be regular patrons of these non-exhibit aspects of the museum. They avail themselves of museum gift shops and cafés, perhaps not on every visit, but frequently. The gift shop and café are often used by Facilitators as a final stop before departing. They represent a reward, as much for themselves as for their companions, for a day well-spent. Whereas many adult visitors to museums, including Facilitating Socializers, are seeking a slightly more upscale eatery, Facilitating Parents are delighted to find something similar to the food court at the shopping mall. Not necessarily McDonald’s, but not Chez Panisse either, as long as it is good value for their money.

When Facilitating Parents visit the gift shop with their children, they have definite expectations. They expect that their children will make demands upon them to purchase a trinket or souvenir, but their hope is that it will be something of value. Similarly, they will be hoping to find an educational book, game, or toy at a reasonable price that they can use to carry on the educational experience at home. The best museum gift shops make these kinds of transactions easy to achieve both financially and psychically. Facilitating Socializers may at first avoid the gift shop since it’s not really part of their visit goal, but after repeat visits, they may discover that it’s a great place to pick up unusual gifts for friends and acquaintances. Developing promotional materials about the shop that is also available in the café can be a good way to entice Facilitating Socializers to pay their first serious visit to the shop.

Needs of Experience Seekers

The Experience seeker’s goal in visiting the museum is not to become a subject matter expert, but to have a great experience. Invariably, what defines a great experience is feeling like they’ve seen and done what’s important to see and do! Since many visitors with this kind of visit motivation lack extensive museum-going experience, as well as a good sense of what’s important to see and do, the most important variables determining the nature and quality of their visit will be access to a good intellectual and physical orientation to the museum. In the absence of good orientation, most Experience seekers will have a tendency to just wander and/or follow the crowds; this may not help them achieve their visit goal. Thus, appropriate and early intervention with this group of visitors can really be helpful. Given that an Experience seeker most often comes to see the “highlights” of the museum, helping them accomplish this goal will significantly enhance their visitor experience. Creating one or more “Guides to the Museum’s Best,” each designed to highlight and help appropriately interpret museum exhibits for the different social groups of Experience seekers—families, all adult groups, foreign visitors—will be helpful to them. Although Experience seekers might drift by the information desk and pick up leaflets and floor plans, they will rarely stop and ask the museum staff for help. Consequently, proactive intervention by a trained staff member is essential such as a few well-designed questions, “I’d love to help make your visit as great as possible. Was there something you particularly hoped to see while here?” Also, given that it is not unusual for Experience seekers to be on a tight, pre-determined time budget, inquiring about the expected duration of their visit is extremely important. It will pay dividends to ask, “How long were you planning on spending with us today? I have some suggestions for different length visits and I can help you customize your experience to meet your needs.”

Since Experience seekers are hoping to get an overview of the place rather than some “deep” understanding, museums that attract large numbers of these visitors should create interpretive aids that reflect this goal. Audio guides should be designed to give the “big picture” and a few salient facts, highlighted by interesting sound bites. Emphasizing the details, as many audio guides do, will be overkill for individuals with this type of visit motivation. Similarly, wall texts should be designed to be read quickly in headline fashion. Details should be in smaller print and not obstruct the Experience Seeker’s goal of moving through the space relatively quickly. The exceptions to these suggestions are the few important iconic exhibits in the museum. These exhibits should have sufficient detail and be designed to answer the specific kinds of questions that a one-time Experience-seeking visitor might have. Through front-end and/or formative evaluation it should be relatively easy to determine what the frequently asked questions are for this group of visitors; the questions an Experience seeker is interested in knowing the answers to are not the kinds of questions a specialist thinks are important. However, if the goal is to satisfy the Experience-seeking visitor as opposed to the Professional/Hobbyist visitor, then the labels should be designed to address the questions of the former. Making a visitor feel inadequate and/or stupid is not a recipe for building future visits or good word-of-mouth recommendations to other potential visitors!

More than most visitors, Experience seekers care about the amenities of the museum. In addition to great signage and orientation to the exhibitions, they need to be able to easily find the washrooms, coatrooms, and café. They expect friendly floor staff, expect interactives to work, and they want the facilities to be clean, bright, and attractive. They want the area between the parking lot and the front door to be as engaging and attractive as the museum itself. In short, Experience seekers want the Disney experience—not the trivial and vacuous aspects of Disney, but the thing that Disney does so well, customer service. If your museum wants to attract large numbers of Experience seekers, then a week at the Disney Institute learning about guest services might not be a bad idea.⁹

Experience seekers are likely to be highly social visitors; their goal is “make memories.” Not surprisingly then, Experience seekers love to take pictures of their museum visitor experience, memorializing this important social and cultural experience for themselves and for others when they get home. Instead of fighting this inclination, why not take advantage of it? Museums with large numbers of Experience seekers should create numerous and conspicuous settings for great photo opportunities. The museum should open up space and allow the Experience seekers to have their picture taken in front of a great iconic feature. Is it a crazy idea for museums with high numbers of Experience seekers to have staff available expressly for the purpose of taking pictures of these groups so everyone can be in the picture? Not if that’s what this group of visitors wants, and your museum is serious about attracting and satisfying visitors with this visit motivation. In theory, great photos will be used to help promote the museum to others and form the foundation of great word-of-mouth promotion to future visitors; this is one of the things Disney does so well.

Like most visitors, Experience seekers will spend time utilizing the non-exhibit aspects of the museum; in fact, they may spend more time outside of the exhibit spaces than they do in them. These visitors are unlikely to see the café and gift shop or for that matter, parking, ticket purchasing, or restrooms as distinct and separate parts of the museum visitor experience. All of these spaces will be perceived as a single whole. Like the majority of visitors, Experience seekers will tend to visit the café and gift shop as their final stop before departing. Research shows that individuals with this visit motivation are likely to be the highest users of the museum’s food services.¹⁰ Some Experience seekers may actually start their visit at the gift shop and never get beyond it! That’s okay, if you appreciate that Experience seekers do not view the gift shop as an irrelevant part of the museum. From their perspective, the gift shop is just as much the “museum” as are the exhibits or programs. This should reinforce how important it is for the gift shop to have intellectual integrity and be as good a representative of what the museum stands for as are the exhibitions and programs. It is necessary to resist the temptation to fill the gift shop with inexpensive items only remotely related to the content and mission of the museum. If a visit to the gift shop represents a major part of a visitor’s museum visit experience, it should be designed to help facilitate the museum’s mission; what is stocked in the store should require as much research and thought as does the best exhibition. The gifts purchased at the shop are likely to be one of the most salient aspects of the visit for Experience seekers; you want them to “spread the word” to others about this part of the experience just as for the exhibits, objects, and programs.

Needs of Professional/Hobbyists

If visitors with an Explorer motivation are like shoppers who love to browse and look for bargains, Professional/Hobbyist-motivated visitors are like shoppers who single-mindedly come into a department store just to buy a single pair of socks. They rush past all of the other store items, ignore the Point of Sale displays and solicitous sales people, and head straight to the socks section. Even then, they are not lured by a sale on argyles, they need sweat socks and that’s what they look for and purchase. For many Professional/Hobbyists, the visit is not an excursion but a job to get done. What factors are most important for these visitors? Clearly, prior knowledge, experience, and interest are important, so too are interactions with professional staff and at least indirectly, orientation. How can we use this information to help such focused visitors make their museum experience better? The best way to help is to be proactive, make what they need easy to find and satisfactory to fulfilling their requirements, then get out of their way.

The Professional/Hobbyist is a visitor population highly unlikely to read labels or follow an exhibit pathway in the “prescribed” way. They are sufficiently capable in that they will be able to take what’s available and use it for their own purposes and needs. They will generally expect, usually but not always correctly, that they already know what any label or wall text is likely to say. They will not be inclined to use any of the interpretive tools the museum provides, whether tours, audio guides, or brochures. Professional/Hobbyists will consider these tools to be too superficial or basic for them, and besides, it would make them look like tourists! Although students may read labels or look for support, most Professional/Hobbyists bring sufficient prior knowledge to the visit to make their own meanings. Ironically, “well-designed” exhibitions and programs—in other words, exhibitions that work well for most visitors—do not work as well for these visitors. On the other hand, the old “visual storage” model is perfect. What they are seeking is intense access to the objects or displays; particularly for those Professional/Hobbyists with a content objective, they’d love to get behind the scenes and see the objects up-close, without crowds and without disturbance.

Creating special behind-the-scenes tours or visits for Professional/Hobbyists are usually a great way to reach out to individuals with these kinds of motivations, as well to the communities with which they are associated. Individuals with a Professional/Hobbyist motivation are not likely to want to interact extensively with others in their own social group, but they are likely to want to interact directly with museum staff experts. Art-focused Professional/Hobbyists want to talk with professionals who know about art. History-focused Professional/Hobbyists want to talk with historians, politicians, artisans, or others with direct knowledge of the topic. Science-focused Professional/Hobbyists will want to talk with scientists. They’ll attend lectures and seminars in order to gain access to these people. They’ll also enroll in workshops and tutorials if it will allow them to hone their skills or gain access to the collections. Museums should work collaboratively with hobby organizations or professional groups to not only schedule, but design such experiences. This will both increase your institution’s reach as well as ensure that what you create truly meets the needs of this audience. Experiences like these provide great satisfaction for the Professional/Hobbyist because they confirm the individual’s self-perception of themselves as knowledgeable, special people. These individuals do not perceive themselves to be typical visitors; they consider themselves to be the real museum visitors while everyone else is just a “tourist.” Not that you want to disparage other visitors, but anything you can do to help reinforce the Professional/Hobbyist’s sense of identity with their specialty and help them feel as if they are special and important, will work wonders for building satisfaction and loyalty to your institution.

Since Professional/Hobbyists are typically repeat visitors, they normally require very little orientation support or guidance, particularly when utilizing their home museum. When on the road, these same visitors will be looking for good maps, orientation signage, and knowledgeable and responsive floor staff who can help guide them to the areas of the museum they wish to see. Since, unlike department stores, the layout of every museum is different and eclectic, even the most museum-savvy visitor requires some orientation help when visiting a new museum for the first time. Nothing frustrates a Professional/Hobbyist more than getting lost in a new museum. They think of their time as precious and getting lost means less time for accomplishing the purpose for which they came. They want to get where they’re going as quickly and efficiently as possible and their expectation is that the museum will, and should support them in this effort.

Professional/Hobbyists will use the café and the gift shop, but not necessarily on every visit. Since they are likely to be quite intense during their visit, they will use the café as a recharging station—as a place to build up their caloric reserves before plunging back into their work. Like the rest of their visit, their use of the gift shop will be quite focused. The typical individual with a Professional/Hobbyist motivation will be looking for in-depth books on a topic of interest, reference materials, and specialized books or supplies that they believe they can’t find anywhere else. Although stocking these kinds of materials can be quite expensive, if your museum has sufficient numbers of Professional/Hobbyists, it might warrant the cost. For some institutions, Professional/Hobbyists can be the single largest patron group of the shop.

Needs of Rechargers

As museum visitors go, individuals with a Recharger motivation are, in theory at least, relatively easy to please. They are not making huge demands upon the institution; all they want is a peaceful and aesthetically pleasing corner of the world in which to relax. More than for any other visitors, individuals seeking this kind of experience are highly attuned to the large-scale physical context of the museum. They are sensitive to the aesthetics of the space, and to crowding. If your museum is well-designed for Recharger behavior, it should be easy to help them satisfy their agenda. If your museum is not well-designed for such experiences, you’ll need to do some work. What does every Recharger want? Visitors who wish to be renewed and reinvigorated are seeking a quiet place where they can sit without being disturbed—a space where they can recharge their personal “batteries.” What is the one prop that so many museums lack that would enable this behavior? It is abundant benches strategically located in front of beautiful places and out of high-traffic areas. Why is it that benches are so hard to come by in so many institutions? They are relatively cheap, durable, and seem to always be in demand! Are we afraid that people might sit and stay too long? It’s always amazing how adaptable people are—they will sit on ledges, on the floor, and some visitors will even bring their own seating if the museum will allow it. What does the lack of benches communicate to Recharger visitors? It certainly doesn’t communicate “welcome” and that we understand your needs and are eager to accommodate them!

Although Rechargers may be thrilled to see what’s on display, this is not the primary benefit they are seeking in a visit. They will pass up all the usual interpretive materials and only glance at labels when something really piques their interest. Individuals with this motivation are often looking for that special “at-one” experience with an often-viewed, much-loved object, scene or piece of art. Many art museum curators claim they are catering to these kinds of visitors when they minimize the size and content of labels. Although this may be true, I somehow doubt that label size really is the issue. As long as the labels don’t significantly intrude upon the aesthetics of the art, Rechargers are quite content with labels of any size. They’re much more likely to be distressed by crowds that get between them and the art than by the size and content of labels.

Like Professional/Hobbyists, individuals with a Recharger motivation are often repeat visitors and require very little orientation support or guidance. But when traveling, like any visitor who is visiting a place for the first time, good maps, orientation signage, and knowledgeable and responsive floor staff will also be appreciated. What they’re seeking is not typically put on a map, so they are wont to wander the new museum, quite satisfied to discover for themselves the beautiful object, vista, or setting of their desires. However, like most visitors, Rechargers are delighted when they find helpful, friendly museum staff willing to support their journey and able to respond to a unique or specific request.

Rechargers are the group of visitors least likely to avail themselves of the non-exhibit aspects of the museum. They are unlikely to attend lectures and programs and they are disinclined to even visit the café or gift shop. As a group, Rechargers are visiting the museum in order to receive spiritual rather than physical or commercial nourishment. However, if they do go to the café, they’ll expect food and drink to meet their high aesthetic standards as in the gift shop. In theory, it should be possible to drive Rechargers more to the café and gift shop if they knew that both settings had sumptuous offerings commensurate with their aesthetic tastes and interests. This would need to be a cost-benefit decision, determined by the number of Rechargers who visit your institution and the trade-offs required to cater to the needs of this audience as opposed to another.

Finally, it is worth re-emphasizing that Rechargers, as are other visitor groups, are not a type of person; they are people with a particular, situationally determined type of visit motivation. Each individual visitor is equally capable of enacting any of these visit motivations on any given day. The key to making your museum work is understanding what motivates each visitor to your museum on that particular day and then, ensuring that the experiences they have with exhibits, programs, staff, and museum amenities fulfill the needs determined by those motivations.

Expanding the Boundaries

All of these interventions make great sense and will help museums move towards the twenty-first century ideal of a personalized and customized museum visitor experience. However, restricting efforts to meeting visitors’ needs to the time visitors are physically within the museum (or on-property if you’re an outdoor facility) will limit the capacity for success. The museum visitor experience stretches beyond the museum in time and space—both prior to and subsequent to the visit. To make your museum really work for visitors requires engaging with visitors both before and after their visit.

Before Arrival

In an ideal world, visitors would arrive at the museum completely conscious of their true visit identity-related needs and already mindful of the ways that the museum could best support their visit motivations. In this “visitor-as-informed-consumer” scenario, each visitor would enter the museum with a concrete understanding of what their visit goals were together with the well-formulated knowledge of how to best utilize the resources of the museum for accomplishing them. If this scenario were true for all visitors, all museums would be able to almost fully meet the needs of each and every visitor. Unfortunately, presently only a small minority of museum visitors fully live out this scenario. Most museum visitors have only the vaguest understanding of their true needs and motivations upon entering the museum. Most visitors also enter the museum with only a vague sense of what the museum has to offer. The collective result is that the visitor is left to randomly attempt to play a matching game between their personal needs and the museum’s capabilities. How much simpler this would be if both sides of the equation were better known! I am going to argue that we should strive to make this “ideal” scenario a reality.

Just as I discovered twenty-five years ago that schoolchildren’s field trip experiences could be made significantly more successful if they were provided with a pre-visit orientation that focused on their agendas and needs,¹¹ we should also think of creating pre-visit orientations for regular visitors. In theory, this intervention could happen online as a pre-visit orientation, with the museum encouraging visitors to participate in these pre-visit experiences. Since the purpose of this pre-visit orientation is to measurably enhance the visitor’s museum experience, why shouldn’t visitors be willing to do this? If it isn’t feasible to have everyone participate online prior to a visit, some kind of quick intervention just as the visitor enters the museum could be created by the museum staff. Perhaps, this intervention could even be tied to the ticketing process. Regardless, the long-term goal of this effort would be to begin to create an increasingly well-informed visiting population knowledgeable about both their needs and the museum’s capacities to meet those needs.

Let’s use the Facilitating Parents visitor group as an example how this might work. You might think that this type of visitor would understand their visit motivations and have a good sense of how the museum could support the museum visitor experience of their children. However, surprisingly enough, this is not the case. Although most Facilitating Parents do have a self-awareness about their visit motivations, few know how to optimally use a museum to support this visit goal. As we know, not every adult who arrives at the museum with children in tow is a Facilitating Parent, but many are. Thus, it should be possible to create some kind of intervention prior to the visit that would help these adults best support their museum visit experience. It would be wonderful to greet parents prior to their visit either online or at the front door and suggest possible ways that the museum might best support their visit on that day. It is perhaps surprising for most museum professionals to discover that most parents don’t know how to provide engaging educational experiences for their children within a museum context.

Research that colleagues and I did at The Children’s Museum, Indianapolis revealed that the majority of parents visiting with children, most of whom were well-educated, upper-middle-class mothers, had surprisingly narrow views about the possibilities for their children’s learning in a museum. We had identified more than a dozen different types of learning outcomes that could be supported by the museum, including learning to be creative, learning to be curious, learning to be good observers, learning to think critically, and learning to ask good questions. When we asked parents what they thought the learning opportunities were available at the Museum, most parents could only think of one type of possible learning outcome for their children, and that was the usual suspect of learning new facts and concepts.¹² We recommended a variety of strategies that would be designed to help parents know about the full range of possible types of learning so that they could take full advantage of all the museum had to offer. In the absence of knowing what might be possible, the parents’ ability to be a fully-engaged and supportive facilitator was limited. For example, we encouraged the Museum to run parent-educator training workshops for their regular family visitors to help parents get better at using the museum. We also encouraged the use of volunteer families as models in the galleries so other parents could adopt these strategies without the need of formal training. As The Children’s Museum has begun to implement some of these ideas, the quality of parent-child interactions in the museum has markedly improved. Similar examples could be generated for the other types of visitor identity-related motivation categories. The bottom line is that an informed visitor is more likely than an uninformed visitor to be a satisfied visitor to your museum.

After Departure

As museum professionals come to fully appreciate the vital importance of visitors’ pre-visit expectations and motivations, they will be forced to work at influencing these perceptions and understandings prior to the actual museum visit. In a similar way, the more we learn about how visitors make meaning from their museum visit experience, the more we come to appreciate that those memories are also “made” after the visit. Hence, museum professionals need to work at strategies to extend the museum visitor experience beyond the temporal and physical boundaries of the visit. As outlined in earlier chapters, these memories are only partially formed during the actual visit. Actual memories are laid down over time and typically include subsequent supportive and complementary experiences. Rather than leaving those subsequent experiences to chance, the museum should attempt to be directly involved in helping to support and, as much as possible, shape those experiences.

Virtually all museums currently believe they are actively addressing this issue. Nearly all have web sites and print materials that provide materials that support their exhibitions and programs, and nearly all also have gift shops that sell related materials. Although these efforts are part of the solution, they represent just a small part of what might be possible if museums invested as much time and energy in trying to reach the visitor after leaving the museum as they do trying to support them while in the museum. This seems heretical since museum professionals would argue that the only thing they can actually control is what happens inside the museum; after the visitor leaves they are beyond the “reach” of the museum. I would argue this is only true because museums have historically limited their view of what a museum is; if museums re-envisioned themselves as educational institutions with tools and ways to reach people across time and space, then other possibilities would become available. Take, for example, the development of virtual museums—institutions with no walls or actual onsite visitors. These museums have figured out how to engage visitors beyond traditional temporal and spatial boundaries! There are also myriad examples of collaborations between museums and other free-choice educational institutions such as public television, community organizations, and libraries, in which working together has been able to broaden how and when each institution reaches visitors.

But beyond just actively working to build long-term memories, museums have a vested interest in staying in contact with their visitors since this is the most cost-effective way to ensure future audiences. The most likely person to visit your museum today is someone who visited your museum previously. If you’re going to spend money on marketing, then the least expensive and most effective use of those monies will be to invest in relationships with current users—trying to get each current user to visit once more rather than trying to convince people who have never visited to visit for the first time. The trick to getting any visitor to return is to make them feel good about their experience. Doing that transcends just ensuring that all the structures are there for a great museum experience; great experiences also require follow-up with the visitor after he or she leaves the museum. Museum professionals need to become better at communicating with visitors through email or on the Web; what needs to be communicated are things that help support and reinforce the visitor’s identity-related needs. For example, to help ensure visitor satisfaction, museum professionals need to figure out how to continue to support the Explorer’s need to have their curiosity satisfied and to support and reinforce how wonderful it was that the Facilitator invested their time and energy in helping to meet the needs of someone else.

What would it take to convince a person with a Recharger motivation to return again and again to the museum? Like all of us, Rechargers appreciate being invited. If we could identify our visitors who visit primarily in order to become rejuvenated and reinvigorated, we would want to say something like the following as they were leaving, or shortly after their visit, “Thank you so much for visiting us today. I hope we were able to provide you with that special moment you were seeking. Please let us know when next you come so we can help make your visit perfect. Perhaps, we can suggest a place you haven’t discovered yet to visit that will meet your needs.” By contrast, the communication goal for individuals with a Professional/Hobbyist motivation would be make them feel as if they were members of the museum’s “inner family.” The museum would want to identify these Professional/Hobbyist visitors and then go out of its way to keep them apprised of special lectures, courses, and events.

The typical Experience seeker visitor is unlikely to return to your museum; however, if satisfied, they are highly likely to encourage others to visit. Rather than invest great effort in trying to convince Experience seekers to revisit, the smart museum would invest its energies in helping convert each and every Experience-seeking visitor into an ambassador for their museum. Why not give away postcards of the museum and set up a mailing station within the museum that encourages Experience-seeking visitors to send a postcard to loved ones? Using the latest technology, you could help visitors download their own images from cameras or cell phones and create a personalized postcard they could mail to their friends. Considering what traditional marketing to this audience costs, including the cost of postage might be one of the more cost-effective marketing strategies for a museum. An alternative strategy would be to create lapel buttons that say, “I visited the X Museum.” These buttons could be given away to all visitors, but the only visitors likely to appreciate these would be those with Experience-seeking visit motivations who feel a sense of satisfaction at having actually accomplished their goal of “having been to the museum and seen this important place.”

As mentioned, the goal of the museum is to help visitors reinforce their entering identity-related motivation. Each and every one of us wants to feel special, whether it’s because of our curiosity, our concern for our loved ones, our interesting hobbies or interests, our ability to discriminate the beautiful from the ugly, or just that we saw something important that only those who visit this place gets to see. I would assert that reinforcing these feelings and making sure that all visitors feel good about having accomplished their personal goals are as important as ensuring that visitors perceive they had a quality museum visitor experience. When visitors return home, they will think about returning, about becoming members, and will tell their friends and relatives about their wonderful museum visitor experience. The museum visitor experience is a dynamic process, a cycle with no real beginning, middle, or end—all parts of the process are equally important if the public is to have their needs satisfied.