Visitor studies can be full of surprises. From the study’s development to analysing results, you are bound to find questions, patterns and responses you did not anticipate – and that is a good thing.
The reason visitor studies have this potential for surprise is because they are about individuals. There is no visitor experience without a visitor. And, visitors filter interpretive products and programs through their own knowledge and contexts. To ask a philosophical question, can a visitor experience even exist, without a visitor perceiving it?
Since every visitor’s experience is unique to them it is impossible for someone else to know how they will respond to a site’s exhibit or program, unless you ask them.
Here are five ways to remain open to being surprised if you are doing evaluation that involves asking visitors about their experience (for example in a survey, interview, etc.):
- Avoid leading questions. This means asking questions without making assumptions or suggesting the answer you want. For example, asking “What makes this museum family friendly?” implies the museum is family friendly, which nudges the respondent to agree, even if they don’t feel that way.
- Ask questions, even if you think you already know the answer. You are just one perspective – a valuable perspective – but still just one. Ask questions that are relevant to your visitor study, even if you think you know the answer already. Include opportunities for visitors to elaborate on their responses by collecting qualitative data after closed questions and/or by providing a way for them to leave additional comments. You can gain a lot of insight by inviting people to share their perspectives more freely.
- Ask people to join your team/consult who are in the target audience. This is a great way to find which kind of questions elicit the most robust responses – get more perspectives in the room from the start! You don’t need to have a massive visitor study team to do this, but give yourself time to at least pilot your visitor study and adjust your data collection methods accordingly based on feedback.
- Leave space and time for informal/unstructured responses and conversations. If you have self-serve surveys, hang around where they are being distributed. If you’re doing timing and tracking, take a break from that to casually chat with visitors. Although you may not be able to record these conversations they can inspire future visitor studies and help you understand your audience better.
- Follow up on surprising twists. Once you start collecting data you might notice unexpected patterns right away. If it is possible, and helpful to your visitor study, you can adjust how you’re collecting data right away to dig deeper into those unexpected patterns. However, you may prefer to finish up the current study and follow up on any surprising findings in a future evaluation. Visitor studies build on themselves, so keep track of all your unexpected results so you can include them in future evaluation projects!
You may also be surprised at how unsurprising your results are. That is also okay. Unsurprising responses make a fantastic baseline and indicate you know your audience well. Or it might be a hint that you need to go back and look at how you’re asking questions in the visitor study – because respondents may just be saying what they think you want to hear.
Visitor studies can be a lot of trial and error, but the more you practise the easier they become. Remember, the point of doing visitor studies is to learn something about your audience that you didn’t know before.
TM Visitor Studies 