Slides with a guest lecture I gave about the museum visit, looking at the relationship between on-site and off-site and online and offline.

1. Digital Heritage
The Museum Visit – On and off
Merel van der Vaart - @MerelVaart
Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture
Allard Pierson Museum

2. Part 1: The Museum Visit (Disrupted)
Part 2: Smartphones as gamechangers
Part 3: Extending the visit online

4. A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of
society and its development, open to the public, which acquires,
conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible
and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the
purposes of education, study and enjoyment.
ICOM
International Council of Museums

6. John H. Falk & Lynn D. Dierking
‘The Museum Experience’ (Whaleback Books: 1992)
The Interactive Experience Model
Physical
context
Social
Context
Personal
Context
Interactive
Experience

7. Aside:
According to Falk and Dierking, the museum visit is being created
as it happens as an interplay of physical context, personal
context and social context. The museum visit is created as a
collaboration between museum and visitor, where the museum
can usually only ‘control’ the physical context.

8. “Visitors are under no obligation to engage with free-choice
exhibition environments…
… and yet they do.”
Tiina Roppola
‘Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience’ (Routledge: 2012)

9. Aside:
Tiina Roppola als emphasises the importance of the bodily
experience. The museum visit is a physical activity.

10. “attention is selective
(…)
attention has focusing power
(…)
the capacity of attention is limited.”
Stephen Bitgood
‘The role of attention in designing effective interpretive labels’
in Journal of Interpretation Research 5/2 (National Association for Interpretation: 2000)

11. Visitors decide when and how they want to visit the museum.
Visitors have their own agenda when visiting the museum.
Visitors decide how to engage with exhibits & displays.
Some visitors like being guided, some don’t.
Visiting museums is exhausting & people know it.

13. Ross Parry & Nadia Arbach
In: Cameron & Kenderine (eds.) ‘Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage’ (MIT Press: 2007)
online offline
off-site
on-site

14. Ross Parry & Nadia Arbach
In: Cameron & Kenderine (eds.) ‘Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage’ (MIT Press: 2007)
websites 'outreach'
in-gallery internet
connections / live labels
traditional
museum visit
online offline
off-site
on-site

15. Ross Parry & Nadia Arbach
In: Cameron & Kenderine (eds.) ‘Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage’ (MIT Press: 2007)
Responsive
websites
'outreach'
in-gallery internet
connections / live labels
traditional
museum visit
Apps / social
media
online offline
off-site
on-site

16. Visitors decide when and how they want to visit the museum.
Visitors have their own agenda when visiting the museum.
Visitors decide how to engage with exhibits & displays.
Some visitors like being guided, some don’t.
Visiting museums is exhausting & people know it.
Smartphones changed everything!

22. More and more museums want to build up a long term
relationship with their visitors.
They want people to return.
And they want to connect the online and the on-site.
However, encouraging people to extend the visit, after they left
the physical building can be challenging.

23. You work at the Allard Pierson Museum (or museum of choice).
Develop a proposal for an extended museum visit:
- Who’s your target audience?
- What does the experience look/feel like?
- What is your call to action/bridge between on-site and off-site?
- How will you measure success?

24. Present your proposal:
- Who’s your target audience?
- What does the experience look/feel like?
- What is your call to action/bridge between on-site and off-site?
- How will you measure success?
Feedback: “Yes, but” – “Yes, and”