Museum foyers leicester dec methodological challenges
- 1. Methodological challenges for foyer evaluation research
- 2. Ambitious tenets for framing foyer evaluation design (1) The foyer is an ensemble of objects, signs and people Visitors make sense of this ensemble, not of separate foyer elements The visitor experience comes from the relationality within the ensemble of objects, signs and people
- 3. Ambitious tenets for framing foyer evaluation design (2)) While specific foyer phenomena may dominate the experience, and should therefore be identifiable in the evaluation, the scope of the evaluation should encompas the full range of functionalities The need to evaluate experiments within the ensemble calls for a before/after evaluation design
- 4. A reminder from communication research Communication cannot be conceptualized as transmission. Rather, it must be conceptualized in terms of both parties involved in creating meanings, by means of dialogue. The sense people make of the media messages is never limited to what sources intend and is always enriched by the realities people bring to bear. (Dervin 1989, p. 72)
- 5. From the conventional toolbox of evaluation research: Survey questionnaire Qualitative interviews Individual, depth Focus groups, natural groups Participant observation All useful in well-known ways! (cf. New Walk Museum and Art Gallery visitor survey) video glasses (Bruno Ingemann) Eye-tracking Follow-up sense-making interview
- 6. Lessons from New Walk visitor survey Basic demographics, visit purpose: necessary! What people missed in the foyer: provides useful indicators about need for spatial orientation project museum identity more clearly blurring foyer and in-gallery spaces What people remembered: Avoid test impression! Does not generate new ideas for foyer design. What people looked at: is this perceived as a meaningful question? What do we learn from the answers?
- 7. Q methodology: a mixed method approach Christian Kobbernagel, Roskilde University/DREAM
- 8. Investigation of student experience in art workshops School class visit art galleries Guided dialogue about art works and exhibition theme Students produce audio podcast Target group 13-19 year olds Workshop aim to facilitate students reflections about art theme or cultural political issues
- 9. Research design 1. Research question: What patterns of coherent views on art, media work process and reflective thinking can be found among students? 2. Questions based on students discourses about art experiences 3. Interview tool: questions are translated into statements 4. Data collection online: 1. sorting statements on grid 2. commenting on select responses 5. Quantitative factor analysis of sorted statements produces type views (survey analysis can be added) 6. Interpretation of type views and conclusion
- 10. Preparing data collection Students discourses Educator talk is often long and boring. It is fun to work with media in groups. The art works were exciting. I kind of leave with a disturbed mind Statements Art works are exciting, because one does not get a fixed opinion imposed about them It is complex to understand art, but I like art, because it is mysterious It is only if I know something about the artworks beforehand, that I really have an experience Some artworks are nice, but a lot of it doesnt really mean anything to me
- 11. Online data collection sorting exercise see http://www.qmethodology.dk/flashq/flashQ10.swf
- 12. Data collection writing comments see http://www.qmethodology.dk/flashq/flashQ10.swf
- 13. Type 1: The active producer view Factor array (top five and buttom five statements) 8. It is more fun to produce material by the computer, than listening to stories +3 about the artworks 9. It is exciting to use special features in the computer programme, when +3 editing a video podcast or other 7. The best part of the visit is when working with digital camera and the +2 computer programme +2 4. Some artworks are nice, but a lot of it doesnt really mean anything to me +1 10. Its more productive for me to work with media, than to write an assignment 12. When I experience artworks, I eventually see problems in society in new -1 ways -2 18. I like to discuss the meaning of artworks with my class mates -2 17. I feel, I get more critical, when I see other pictures, after a visit at Arken -3 16. I am interested in getting more knowledge about how to analyze artworks 11. When I experience artworks at Arken, I eventually associate to things in my -3 own life
- 14. Analysis results: visitor typology (85 students Type 1: Active producers less interest in art, more active, creative, non-reflective, more boys Type 2: Engaged art learners art knowledge seekers, high engagement, less reflective, trained students, younger, all girls Type 3: Process enthusiasts media production focus, highly reflective self-aware of learning, design interested, mixed gender Type 4: Inspired art explorers art appreciators, enjoy art, highly reflective, mixed, dissents of elitarian art views, older, mixed gender Supplement with their verbal comments(qualitative)
- 15. Extrapolating Q methodology to foyers: deriving statements from New Walk visitor survey Describing ambience there is need for more: inspiration warm welcome and approachableness (it should be the opposite to a church) colorfulness, attractiveness cousyness (one should feel at home) needs more to get you in the mood Describing information there is need for more: organized information (too easy to miss core info) awareness on communicating what is expected more instant, accessable and clear (like a library of the museum) hub-like-things, a junction of networks explanation of signs (arrows pointing are not understandable) more tables automatic doors map on the wall (not a leaflet and not digital!)
- 16. Translating visitor discourses into statements I thought that the greeter who directed me into the collections was a nuisance The Twitterfall screen was fun and informative When I came in, I didnt get much information to help orientation The foyer served well as an appetizer to the gallery space The screen with breaking news about key items in the collections was irrelevant The signs on the wall really helped me find out where to go first in the exhibition I missed a focal piece (work of art, striking geological find), which could draw me into the exhibition proper There should be more places to sit and relax The shop should be more separate from the rest of the foyer
- 17. The rewards of Q-based evaluation The resulting typology satisfies the tenets: The typology reflects the visitors experience of the foyer as a design ensemble The typology incorporates the relationality of foyer elements The role played by single design elements can be isolated Some qualitative thick description complements the typology Assistance with online data collection and factor analysis: Christian Kobbernagel
- 18. Thank you! Open methodological discussion
Editor's Notes
- #3: Into workshop mode: we may ask What methods are suitable for studying visitors experience of foyers? What do we want foyers offer museum visitors? How do visitors make sense of foyers as they pass this threshold between everyday life and the museum experience proper? Before we consider the actual field methods, lets take a look at the methodological framework which may make some methodological tools more appropriate than others. We suggest that it is useful to consider a number of ambitious tenets for framing foyer evaluation design.
- #5: I thought it could be useful to just remind ourselves about how radically we must conceptualize the visitor experience in order to design research which really grasps that visitor experience! Esp. The second half of the quote: Whatever museum managers and designers want to achieve by means of a specific foyer element, it is essentially unpredictable what visitors are going to make of it.
- #6: These methods are all useful in well-known ways, so Im not going to say a lot about them apart from perhaps a few lessons to be learnt from the strengths and weaknesses I seemed to discern in the New Walk visitor survey.
- #7: As I read the visitor survey of the pilot study in the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, I thought perhaps playing the devils advocate - what can we learn from this? We have to recognize that it IS very difficult to glean the valuable information we want about the visitor experience! Present slide bullets. After: When you are going to evaluate the two foyer experiments, it is perfectly possible to apply the well-known methodological tools, separately or in complementary sequence. But: we would like to challenge you with a research design which we have used in the Dream project, not in order to evaluate foyers, but in order to evaluate the learning experiences of adolescents in an art museum. First Ill demonstrate the method by telling you about our use of it in the evaluation of learning experiences. Then Ill try to demonstrate in skeletal fashion how it is possible to extrapolate this method to a foyer evaluation project.
- #8: The method is called Q methodology (the name derives from the fact that mainstream statistican method is called R methodology, I dont understand the particulars here). It is a method which is a hybrid between qualitative and quantitative methodologies hence a mixed method approach. We are not going to foist this method on your project. But we hope that just getting to know the Q-methodological design will inform your methodological thinking, and lead back to some of the tenets you saw on a previous slide. Slight change of slide design (slides produced by Christian Kobbernagel and merged with mine)
- #14: What the factor analysis does: Through computational power, it finds out which grid configurations are similar to and different from each other, in a completely relible manner. This is quite similar to what human researchers do when they look for patterns in hundreds of pages of qualitative transcripts. But this has always been the Achilles heel of qualitative interpretation: The interpretive process is not transparent, and the computational power of the human brain is less reliable when it comes to discerning the thousands of similarities and differences in what informants tell you.