What is the experience like in visiting museums and how does it differ from an average go-er or a first time visitor? Is there a way that we can turn the visitor’s unique experience into a physical token of remembrance?
We looked at what museum visitors are doing, what they’re saying and what they really want.
Storyboarding a museum experience that allowed individuals/groups to reflect and debrief on what they saw. This process utilises personalisation, in which the individual receives a physical token that represents their own unique journey within the museum.
The Problem and Design Brief
We interviewed a sample of 8 users from ages 18-29 to find more about their experience and what compels to come to the museum. You would think that museums are becoming more irrelevant in the Digital Age. But this is not the case, more young adults are going to museums than older demographics. In our case study, it was clear that our users loved to go to the museum.
During the context mapping sessions, here were comments made by stakeholders in their own experiences in visiting museums, which we then categorised into three stages.
Back at the Powerhouse museum, we observed something really interesting. Here is a typical progression of a museum visit but what most user journey maps don’t show you is that the groups formed at the beginning constantly changed. People left, people join. And repeat.
Issues with the Initial Ideation
Based on this, we believed that people wanted to socialise more in the museum, going with friends and chatting with them during the experience. However we realised that we were creating a problem out of an observation from the context mapping sessions, without fully understanding if it was a problem to begin with. We were trying to develop a method for increasing socialisation between museum goers, but we realised that socialisation is something that is bound to happen regardless as previous research has stated that an individual will always share their experience with others, despite having gone to the museum by themselves or with others.
So this wasn’t really a problem to begin with.
Establishing A New Design Problem
We stepped back and looked at our data again. Socialisation is only just one part of the overall experience.
The problem was that we all have preconceived notions of what visiting a museum will do for us. We have this mismatch in expectations and our actual experience, and so we do not optimise our time to get the most rewarding experience we can.
A lot of users said they needed to get their moneys and because of this they try to see as much as they can, resulting in mental fatigue.
The goal is not trying to force socialisation, but focusing on creating an optimised journey for each individual that encourages self reflection, in which socialisation becomes a product of this experience.
When you are in a museum, do you look at what you like, do you explore to figure out what you enjoy, or do you do both simultaneously? Ultimately, we understand that individuals are fuelled by self interest.
Final Idea: A Token Experience
The token will facilitate self reflection for the individual, socialisation is the by-product.
Having a token allows the individual looks back on the significant parts of their journey, allowing them to meditate on what they are actually interested in, based on how long and which areas they interacted with the most.
The shape, colour and overall design of physical token represents your own personal experience.
The token is small enough to be used as a starting point to begin a conversation and one can further their learning experience by comparing how each of their journeys were different yet suited to each of their own interests.
Once the museum goer has finished their experience, they are prompted to this screen, which gives them a digital overview of their time in the museum space. If interested, they have the ability to collect a personalised token that is an amalgamation of their experience.
