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Visitor research and evaluation are ways to learn about our audience and incorporate feedback from the public to inform and iteratively improve the visitor experience. They are integral to the exhibit development process for the Outdoor Exploratorium and look at questions such as:
- What are our visitors’ outdoor habits?
- What are our audiences’ preconceptions about the outdoors?
- What do visitors notice about the outdoor environment?
- Do they perceive individual objects and physical phenomena?
- Do they notice relationships between components that make up larger systems, or other types of relationships?
What types?
- Do people perceive change over time, one of the most universal yet subtle aspects of outdoor phenomena?
- Which kinds of interventions are most effective at helping visitors to notice and understand aspects of the outdoors?
Visitor research and evaluation will continue to study these and other questions as we identify and meet the challenges posed by the project.
Selected reports are listed below.
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| Visitors' outdoor plans, preconceptions, and interests |
| This front-end study was conducted to identify visitors’ preconceptions about the outdoors, their outdoor plans when visiting, and the types of outdoor activities they were interested in during Exploratorium visits. |
| July 2004 |
Joyce Ma, Jackie Wong, and Emily Hatch |
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| Walk Along: What visitors notice on their way to the Exploratorium |
| The study identified what visitors noticed as they walked between their cars and the Exploratorium, including types of objects and relationships, and connections between what they saw inside and outside the Exploratorium. In addition, the study looked at areas to which visitors had positive and negative reactions in order to identify the kinds of spaces visitors find appealing and those we may have difficulty persuading them to explore. |
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| Noticing Tour: Then and Now at the Palace of Fine Arts |
| This study examined a self-guided noticing tour in which visitors explored how the Palace of Fine Arts and the surrounding Marina neighborhood have changed since the early 1900s. It contains data collected from interviews with visitors conducted both immediately following and several months after the tour. |
| May 2004 |
Joyce Ma, Veronica Garcia-Luis, and Jackie Wong |
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Experiments in Noticing: The Noticing Tours |
| This evaluation study gauged what visitors found interesting about four expert-led tours offered during the Outdoor Exploratorium’s all-day public event on October 16, 2004. In addition, we looked to see if and how each tour encouraged visitors to notice the outdoors in new ways and if visitors found anything confusing or disappointing about each tour. |
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Visitor Research and Evaluation at the Exploratorium» |
