The role of visitor studies in shaping visitor-centered museums

Abstract

Visitor studies are an important source of knowledge within museum practice: They inform what we believe about our audiences, what kinds of interpretation we develop, and how we conceptualize success. As visitor studies professionals, we see firsthand that the ways we gather data have implications for how we and our colleagues view visitors and how visitors perceive our institutions. Meanwhile, we also see opportunities for visitor studies within museums' broader aspirations to become more visitor-centered, as defined by meaningful two-way engagement with visitors. Using real-world project examples, this paper explores possibilities for moving toward a more visitor-centered approach to data collection, in which practitioners can more clearly privilege meaning, transparency, and care. As starting points, we suggest that active attention to four considerations should inform more visitor-centered visitor studies: comfort (i.e., the well-being of people); context (i.e., the circumstances of museum experiences and study implementation); flexibility (i.e., responsiveness to dynamics that imply a need for change); and value (i.e., supporting relations of mutual benefit).