Triggering Museum Visits

Triggering Museum Visits: Part 1: Combination of two frameworks Triggering museum visits based on visitor roles Part 2: Design Case Initiating Interest in the topic of National Socialism in teenagers

Kress, Judith (TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering)

Vermeeren, A.P.O.S. (mentor)
van Erp, J. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Design for Interaction

2021-03-12

This thesis investigates triggers, introduced in Relevance by Play, as promises of relevance leading to a museum visit. It follows two major goals. Based on these, it is divided in two parts. In the fist part, the Relevance by Play (Vermeeren and Calvi, 2019) framework and the model of museum visitor roles by Falk (2009) are combined, resulting in a structural overview that helps designing triggers for differently motivated visitors. In the second part, his overview is used to design a trigger to initiate the interest of teenagers in the topic of National Socialism, generating an explorer role for a potential visit of a museum/memorial site. Therefore, triggers and visitor roles were first looked at separately and afterwards their connections explored through case studies, a survey and interviews about planning and carrying out museum visits. It was concluded that triggers follow three different functions leading to a museum visit. They first initiate the interest of a potential visitor and generate a motivation to visit, which results in a visitor role, then elicit the potential visitors to consider a certain museum or exhibition through addressing what is perceived as relevant by a potential visitor of a certain role and last, enable the potential visitor to visit the museum. The research suggests that triggers are closely interlinked to the potential visitor’s context. Contextual changes can also function as triggers and triggers can be designed to match contextual circumstances of the potential visitor to be more efficient. The overview provided in the end of part 1 covers the different aspects that play a role in forming the decision of visiting a museum and explains how they are connected. Based on this, designers can guide their research and identify opportunities for designing. In part 2, literature was researched to get a general understanding of the challenges of teaching National Socialism and participants of the target group were interviewed to learn about their relation to the topic and get insights about what they perceive as relevant. The main research-findings show that teenagers have problems engaging in the topic of National Socialism as it feels too far away for them, perceiving it as too cruel to engage and being taught in a school setting, doesn’t allow teenagers to follow their own interests. Making it easier for teenagers to find an access to National Socialism, topics were searched that are easy to relate to and thus feel meaningful to them. The interaction of exploring the topic needed to be fun and of low effort to engage and make explorers curious. To dive deeper in the topic, the process was split up, giving users the possibility to do so at their own interest and agenda. The design concept uses fragments of historic situations in the form of street art. In looking through a tool, the context of the fragment is exposed. Users can scan a QR code leading them to an Instagram page related to the historic situation and webpages of related museums/memorial sites.

Museums
Museum Visitor research
Design for Interaction
Triggers

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2b72b686-401e-4e71-b9c3-78ba0edc6623

Student theses

master thesis

© 2021 Judith Kress