Data-driven app brings 'voice of the visitor' to museum experiences

Users can snap photos or make audio recordings to describe the impact an exhibition had on them © Sarah Kenderdine - EPFL's Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+), led by Sarah Kenderdine, has received support from Engagement Migros to produce muse, a pioneering audience evaluation app, in collaboration with over 20 Swiss museums. The tool provides visitors with an engaging way to communicate their experiences, while helping museums to consider this feedback when developing exhibits and other attractions. Encouraging audiences to participate in evaluations in large enough numbers to provide useful data is notoriously difficult, and for good reason: respondents may find the process time-consuming or boring. But what if you were invited to communicate your experience at a museum exhibit by making drawings, leaving voice recordings, interacting with animated graphics, or taking photos?  This is the aim of muse: a design-led audience evaluation app that helps museums get to know their visitors better. In addition to geographic and demographic information, the tablet-based tool uses some 30 interactive elements to collect qualitative, subjective data about museum visitors' experiences. Capturing experiences Sarah Kenderdine leads the eM+ lab in EPFL's College of Humanities. She explains that in Switzerland, as in many parts of the world, museums usually collect only basic demographic data from their visitors, such as number of entries and origin.