To cue, or not to cue? It’s a question that comes up when planning a visitor study.
Cueing a visitor is when the visitor is aware, before they even enter the space, they will be asked to evaluate their experience at a museum, park, aquarium, etc.
For example, staff at the admissions desk of a museum could cue a visitor (who we’ll call Visitor A) by recruiting them to fill in a post-visit survey upon entry, when they first buy their ticket. They would tell Visitor A to expect to answer questions about their experience when they leave the space. Visitor A enters the museum, they walk around, take a tour – or do whatever they want. When they leave, they fill in the survey.
Now, imagine a non-cued visitor (Visitor B) at the same museum. Visitor B buys their ticket, enters the museum, walks around, takes a tour or does whatever they want. When Visitor B leaves, they are approached by staff who recruit them to fill in a post-visit survey right then and there.
Both Visitor A and B filled in the survey, after their visit. So, if the goal is to get visitors to fill in a survey, does cueing matter? Yes, probably, depending on what you want to know!
Let’s assume we live in a magical world where visitors are happy to fill in a survey, so recruiting them pre or post visit makes no difference to their willingness to participate in the survey. If Visitor A knows they will be asked about their experience when they leave, they might pay more attention to the exhibits, taking note of what they are drawn to and any barriers they encounter. Visitor B has no idea they’ll be asked to fill in a survey when they leave, so they feel no pressure to pay any extra attention to the exhibits or how they feel about them. This means Visitor A and B might behave differently in the museum, based on their knowledge (or lack thereof) of the upcoming survey.
Cueing visitors can change their behaviour. This could be an issue, depending on the goal of the survey. For example, if the purpose of the survey is to find out how well visitors understood the theme of an exhibit, Visitor A might demonstrate a stronger understanding, because they were paying more attention since they knew they’d be asked on the survey. Visitor B might demonstrate less understanding of the theme because they found the exhibit boring and skipped reading most of the text panels.
If this was your visitor study, would you prefer responses from cued or uncued visitors?
Personally, I’d prefer the uncued visitors in this scenario, so I’d get a better understanding of how visitors well visitors grasp the theme when they are not explicitly told to look for it. I mean, does the average visitor spend their time at a museum looking that closely for a theme? It is more likely they are focused on chatting with others in their group, trying to wrangle children or just happy to glide through the exhibit because they’re in leisure mode.
Thinking about the impact of cueing visitors is not new. Noted exhibit planner and evaluator (and author of one of my favourite books, Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach), Beverly Serrell published a study in 2000 titled “Does cueing visitors significantly increase the time they spend at a museum exhibition?”. This study compared the total time cued and uncued visitors spent in 13 different exhibitions. She found that, in most cases, cued visitors spent longer compared to uncued visitors.
In this study, Serrell highlights how cueing might be increasing the length of time visitors spend in the exhibits because the visitor has received a short orientation to the exhibit (topics, the space, etc.), so they feel more comfortable navigating it. She also notes that external motivation – that desire to pay attention because you know you’ll be asked about your experience later – is likely also a factor. But the opposite can also be true. Serrell’s study featured one exhibit where cued visitors spent less time, compared to their uncued peers. This could be an outlier, or, as Serrell suggests, this could be because the cued visitors thought the survey would take a long time so left the exhibit early so they could start filling it in.
Cueing visitors is something you should think about, because it could have a big impact on the results of your study. Cueing can be a great tool to encourage visitors to increase their attention on your exhibits, but think carefully about if that is data that will be useful to you. If you want to gather data on your visitors, as they would normally behave, then cueing is not for you. Either approach could work – just make sure it matches the goals of your study.
Do you want to know more about this topic or do you have a suggestion for a future blog topic? Email me your comments, questions, suggestions, and ideas at tara@tmvisitorstudies.com
Do you want to learn more about the first time and repeat visitors at your site? Check out my Courses to learn more about visitor studies or consider one of my Services for assistance in running a visitor study of your own!
Want to get notified of future blog posts and offerings from TM Visitor Studies? Email tara@tmvisitorstudies.com and request to be added to my monthly newsletter.
Citations
Serrell, Beverly. (2000) “Does cueing visitors significantly increase the time they spend at a museum exhibition?”, Visitor Studies Today, 3(2), pp. 3-6. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265431456_Does_cueing_visitors_significantly_increase_the_time_they_spend_at_a_museum_exhibition
TM Visitor Studies 