Avoiding Prescriptive Profiles

    There's a downside to profiling museum visitors, and it relates to the wide range of identity-related reasons that people visit cultural institutions. As noted in his book Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience, John Falk comments that we all exhibit a complex and shifting range of identity-related needs and aspirations when we visit museums. On one museum visit, I may be accompanying my young nephews on a romp through the space, facilitating their learning experience and bopping from one novel activity to another. Another time, I may visit on my own, looking for a more leisurely, intimate opportunity to explore my own content interests. If my profile is locked in from the first visit as a woman with small children, I won't be necessarily be well-served on subsequent visits, even though I constructed the initial profile honestly and voluntarily.

    We've all had this experience on Amazon.com, which uses a strict "you are what you do" approach to profiling. You buy one collander and suddenly the system is recommending every kitchen implement under the sun. Buy a book of poetry on a whim and you'll receive reminders every time that poet spits out another verse. When the profile system is too prescriptive, recommendations become laughably inappropriate, and the whole value of personalization turns into an annoyance.

    There are several museums that have experimented with an audience-specific approaches to content, particularly in the context of pre-visit online experiences. For example, the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum’s website brings each user to a homepage where he must first self-identify as a kid, caregiver, teacher, or museum geek. The user clicks on the designation that best represents him and receives information about the museum and its offerings tailored to that audience group. For kids, the site offers games. For parents, there are family-friendly activities, public programs, and birthday party options. And for teachers, there is information about group visits. The inclusion of "museum geek" as a fourth audience is a quirky catch-all that provides institutional news and information for anyone wandering the website without a specific set of needs.

    The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York took a similar approach when redesigning their website in 2009. The redesigned site includes a bar at the bottom of the homepage that says "Welcome. Are you a... ?" When you click on the bar, you can self-identify as a first-time MOMA visitor, a returning visitor, a member, a filmgoer, exploring MOMA with a family, doing research, an educator, or a student. Selecting any of these doesn't drop you down an audience-specific rabbit hole; instead, it just alters the rotating content at the bottom of the screen to be more tailored to your particular interest.

    This flexible approach accommodates the changing identity needs of museum visitors. Self-identifying as an educator doesn't mean you can never be that first-time visitor or vice versa. You can easily switch perspectives and see the programming that is relevant to you. Similarly, on the simpler Pittsburgh Children’s Museum website, you are always one click away from the other audience offerings of the institution.

    The Tate Modern takes this concept into their physical museum with a set of pamphlets featuring different tours of the museum based on emotional mood.  Visitors can pick up the "I've just split up" tour and wallow in angst, or the "I'm an animal freak" tour and explore their wilder sides. The Tate also allows visitors to make their own tours online and bring them to the museum. Many museums are experimenting with customized personal tour development sites, but so far, usage is low. Making your own tour requires a level of pre-visit investment and creativity that is only appealing to some visitors. The Tate's pamphlet-based approach may be less personalized, but it enjoys high usage because it invites visitors to quickly select a visit starting point that in some way reflects their immediate identity needs. Because the pamphlets are pre-designed, they also serve as a very light kind of wearable identity device. Staff and other visitors can see people carrying the pamphlets and may respond to each other differently based on their affinities.

Continue to the next section, or return to the outline.