By Shelley Abrams
Have you ever been to a museum that totally “got you,” seemingly catering to your need to read the details of every exhibit? Or to easily find the one thing you came to the museum to see? Or just to use the museum as your social base for the day? And what about the opposite? You went to a museum you heard about and were so bored you hurried through the exhibits just so you could get out of there, and now you wouldn’t recommend it to anyone?
Your experiences, whether good or bad, can in part be attributed to the museum design—including the layout of the museum, the number and types of exhibits, and how each exhibit is displayed or used. But, according to Mr. John H. Falk, your experience is more likely attributable to your “museum visitor identity”—in other words, for the purposes of this article, your museum “persona.” Falk, a faculty member at Oregon State University and renowned expert in the areas of learning and education, is the author of several books about the museum experience.
Personas
What is a Persona? Personas are common in market research when a research team wants to understand how a perceived target audience would interact with, or react to, products or services, web interactions or interfaces, the design and layout of a building, and other similar things. Personas are fictional profiles a research team creates that they believe best represent the targeted end-users. They do this by observing and defining key characteristics of several real people, such as demographics, lifestyles, personality traits, beliefs, thoughts, behaviors, interests, skills, motivations and goals. The intent behind using a persona is to design a product, in our case the museum experience, and a marketing strategy that attracts and meets the needs of the ideal customer, which in turn results in satisfied, repeat customers.
So, now let’s look specifically at museum personas as they relate to the museum experience.
In 2009, Falk published his book Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience, based on studies of what people remembered most about their museum visits and what they learned from them. One of the key takeaways from his studies is that what people learned or remembered from their visit(s) was directly related to what each person did when they visited the museum, which in turn was based on their reason for going to that particular museum in the first place. What he also discovered is that a person’s experience— what they remember and learned—at the same museum can be different each time he or she visits. In other words, one person can be two or more distinctly different types of visitors on different days. Why? Because their motivation for visiting the museum changes.
These different motivators are based on the museum visitor’s perceived benefits they’ll get by going to a specific museum. The motivators are rooted in what an individual thinks they know about themselves— how they describe or identify certain aspects of their “identity” on a given day under specific situations or circumstances. This in turn drives their expectation and experience for that particular museum visit. According to Falk, these so-called identity aspects can include psychological traits (“I’m shy”), physical features (“I’m short”), perceived roles (“I’m a teacher”), abilities (“I speak French”), tastes (“I prefer dark chocolate”), attitudes (“I believe in karma”), behavior (“I like to read everything in a museum”), and explicit group or category membership (“I am a retiree”, or “I’m a member of the Nature Conservancy”).
Museum Visitor Motivation Identities
So how does a museum go about creating an experience that will appeal to people whose museum experience is reflective of their individual situation and identity aspects on a given day? Falk believes it begins with defining museum personas, which he calls Museum Visitor Motivation Identities. Once a museum understands who visits them, they can design the right experience for their visitors.
Falk defined five distinct personas or Museum Visitor Motivation Identities. They are:
“Explorers: Visitors who are curiosity-driven with a generic interest in the content of the museum. They expect to find something that will grab their attention and fuel their learning.
Facilitators: Visitors who are socially motivated. Their visit is focused on primarily enabling the experience and learning of others in their accompanying social group.
Professional/Hobbyists: Visitors who feel a close tie between the museum and their professional or hobbyist passions. Their visits are typically motivated by a desire to satisfy a specific content-related objective.
Experience Seekers: Visitors who are motivated to visit because they perceive the museum as an important destination. Their satisfaction primarily derives from the mere fact of having ‘been there and done that.’
Rechargers: Visitors who are primarily seeking to have a contemplative spiritual and/or restorative experience. They see the museum as a refuge from the work-a-day world or as a confirmation of their religious beliefs.”
Each of these personas has a distinct objective with a specific need to be met when visiting a museum. If the museum wants someone to come back, it must leave their visitors feeling satisfied that those individual objectives and personal expectations were met for that visit and that the experience was memorable. So how do you accomplish this if a visitor’s motivation can change from visit to visit?
To understand this, let’s look a little deeper into each Museum Visitor Motivation Identity and what they would expect from their museum experience.
Explorers go to a museum for the thrill of discovery. They aren’t there to see something specific, so they meander through the museum. They like finding things that are new or different. They also want to understand what they are experiencing. If the museum’s exhibits are stagnant, or they don’t tell an Explorer what they want to know, he or she will be less satisfied and less likely to come back. Explorers focus on their own agenda and seek exhibits that appeal to them whether or not anyone else is with them.
Facilitators bring other people to the museum so those individuals can learn or experience something new. As such, Facilitators are often parents or teachers who feel it’s their duty to do this. They want those they bring with them to get the most out of whatever they came to see, so they expect everything to work. They are also social and tend to come as a group, so they want everyone to feel satisfied and expect exhibits to have something for everyone. Facilitators are generally more interested in making sure others with them are satisfied than in enjoying themselves personally.
Professional/Hobbyists come to the museum to experience and learn more about a specific exhibit or subject that appeals to them. They are there to collect information that meets their objective. This group is more likely to want an interactive experience, especially with an expert on the subject. They will be more likely to attend a lecture or a workshop, and if satisfied, they will tell others about it! They aren’t interested in general group tours unless it is unique and focused on their subject of interest.
Experience Seekers come to the museum because they want to experience something they heard or read about, such as the newest exhibit or traveling show (i.e., King Tut). They are likely not regulars and come just so they can say they “did that, saw that.” They are mostly interested in the highlights and things that catch their eye, so flow and aesthetics is important to them. They are likely to feel satisfied when they come across “new and shiny” objects during their visit. Satisfied Experience Seekers are excited by what they saw, share their experience with others, and are likely to come back.
Rechargers come to the museum to get away from it all. They are most likely to seek out a quiet place where they can sit in front of an exhibit and reflect on it or get lost in their thoughts. They best enjoy the passive experience. They want to feel peaceful or inspired. If there is no place in the museum that allows them to get that experience, Rechargers will likely not return.
Designing for Personas
As you can see from the different museum personas, a “one size fits all” approach in the design of museum exhibits and the museum flow (layout) will not work. It therefore becomes important for a museum to understand what attracts the personas that frequent their museum, or the ones they want to draw in. Some examples include:
To appeal to Explorers, museums need to frequently change their exhibits or other objects within the museum and provide the tools and technology so an Explorer can learn all they want to know. Give them a unique experience every time they visit and the Explorer will feel satisfied enough to come back. Nearly any kind of museum can attract an Explorer since they want to learn something new.
Natural history museums or those with a lot of interactive displays can be particularly appealing to Facilitators as they want those they bring with them to get fully immersed in the experience. Facilitators also want to know they did a good thing, so acknowledging they did this through a ”thank you for attending” kind of note at the end of their visit, might go a long way in encouraging a Facilitator to return.
A museum that specializes in what a Professional/Hobbyist is interested in will most likely get repeat visits, especially if they can provide new information that the Professional/Hobbyist doesn’t already know. More generalized museums can offer special one-time exhibits, a lecture series, or even a meet-and-greet that can provide some new insights on specific topics. Treating this kind of visitor with respect by acknowledging their expertise will likely bring them back!
Experience Seekers want to get in and out quickly— they want to see only what they came to see. A museum can satisfy an Experience Seeker by providing a flyer that highlights the key exhibits or “must-sees” along with a map of where to find them. If they can easily experience what they came to do or see, they may likely come back when they are in town next (they are more likely to be tourists than other museum personas) or tell their friends to check the museum out.
Creating quiet places in the museum, such as a unique art display in a less lit room with benches or chairs to sit on, would appeal to Rechargers. If the museum is extremely busy or popular (i.e., the Louvre or the Metropolitan Art Museum), providing information about the least busy times might be helpful so the Recharger knows when to plan their visit.
Understanding museum personas can also help museums prepare marketing and communication tools that appeal to their target audience and encourage return visits. For example, Experience Seekers are likely to respond to marketing that highlights “must-sees” and, if satisfied with their visit, are likely to excite similar visitors through word-of-mouth. Placing an ad in social media or on a website that emphasizes a new exhibit or technology that allows a more customized experience is likely to appeal to an Explorer. Publishing a schedule on the museum website that breaks out “Peak Times and Quiet Times” might entice a Recharger. Advertising a meet-and-greet for a renowned archeologist at the history museum in an archeology magazine is likely to draw in the Professional/Hobbyist. Sending bulletins to local schools highlighting a special interactive learning exhibit (i.e., “The Body”) may bring in more Facilitators.
Personas are a great tool to help companies design the ideal experience. But because personas are a composite of observed behaviors of several real people, generalizations may come into play and cause misleading assumptions or stereotyping. Museum personas—or museum visitor motivation identities—are no different. Museums need to clearly understand the visitor they want to attract and try not to be all things to all people. They also need to stay tuned into the motivators, changes in technology, and other external variables that impact visitor experiences, both in and out of the museum. Personas, just like real people, can and do change over time as personal experiences change. Successful museums will know this and modify their strategies and designs accordingly.
So what type of museum persona are you? For most museums I go to, I love taking my time and seeing and learning as much as I can, so I typically identify with the Explorer. However, when I visited the Prado in Madrid, I had limited time so I wanted to see only the highlights, which made me an Experience Seeker. When I went to the Guggenheim in New York City I was most definitely a Recharger. I just wanted to be left alone with my thoughts as I observed the art I wanted to see. How about you?