INTERPRETATION - Triumphant Loser - success & failure in visitor research (Science Museum)
The winner takes it all in visitor research? Ben Gammon – former Head of Learning & Audience Development at the Science Museum – on why you need to look for evidence of both success and failure when evaluating exhibitions
Napoleon won, the evidence is clear. He was victorious in the Italian campaign of 1796-7. He defeated the Ottomans in Egypt in 1798-9, the Austrians at Marengo in 1800 and both the Austrians and the Russians at Austerlitz in 1805. By 1812 he was in control of most of Europe including Spain, Italy and Poland. He invaded Russia defeated the Tsar’s army at Borodino and he was able to take Moscow. Surely the evidence is incontrovertible?
Of course there is a problem. Napoleon was also defeated by Nelson at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 and forced to withdraw from Egypt in 1799. Nelson defeated him again at Trafalgar in 1805 and by 1813 he had lost Spain. Borodino was a Pyrrhic victory leading to the disastrous retreat from Moscow where almost 90% of his army was lost. He was resoundingly defeated at the Battle of the Nations in 1813 and again, finally, at Waterloo in 1815.
The point is anything can look like a success, even the most dismal failure, if you only look for evidence of success. In order to properly assess anything you have to look for evidence of both success and of failure. This is as true in visitor research as it is in military history. Yet all too often I have come across evaluations of exhibitions, which make this basic mistake.
John Dewey pointed out the importance of distinguishing the difference between educational and non-educational experiences as far back as the early years of the 20th century. Dewey stated that although all education is based in experience not all experience is educative. Dewey identified particular characteristics of an educative experience – they must build upon previous experiences, be engaging, lead to further questions and exploration related to the experience and must present challenges within the range of capabilities of the learner. Experiences that do not have these characteristics he argued have little educational value or are even detrimental to a person’s learning, or as Dewey described them mis-educative. He describes such experiences as “any experience … that has the effect of arresting or distorting growth of further experiences. An experience may be such as to engender callousness; it may produce lack of sensitivity and responsiveness … to narrow the field of further experience”.
Furthermore Dewey strongly believed that the process of education required a degree of structure, control and pacing. As Dewey described it “the crucial educational problem is of procuring the postponement of immediate action upon desire until observation and judgement have intervened”
In terms of the informal learning sector I would strong argue that experiences that leave visitors feeling less confident about their abilities and more convinced that art, history or science are boring, irrelevant or elitist subjects have not had an educational experience. Similarly I would argue that experiences that do not challenge or extend a visitor’s thinking often have little or no educational value and indeed could be classified as mis-educative.
When planning evaluations at the Science Museum we use two sets of indicators – indicators that learning is occurring and indicators that visitors are encountering barriers to learning. We divide barriers to learning into three categories physical, motivational and intellectual. Physical barriers include such things as a visitor not being able to operate interactive exhibits, visitors not being able to orientate themselves in a gallery, or simply visitors not being able to reach an exhibit or read text under the light conditions of the gallery.
Motivational barriers are essentially where visitors are bored and uninspired by the experience.
Intellectual barriers are where the content is pitched too high for the target audience or, as sometimes happens, where the content does not satisfy visitors’ curiosity and thirst for information. Intellectual barriers also include problems visitors might experience operating an interactive exhibit due to confusing controls or lack of useful feedback from the exhibit.
It is in fact far easier to spot barriers to learning than it is to collect evidence for learning. And it is certainly easier to identify how to improve an exhibition based upon an assessment of barriers to learning than it is based upon evidence of learning.
Of course presenting evidence of failure is never going to be easy or pleasant. All too often this is the last thing a project team or a sponsor would like to hear. But if we are ever going to improve practice we must learn from our mistakes. From past experience it is the things that do not work that are most useful when planning future projects. We must also pay attention to such data because the impact of a bad museum experience are often far from trivial and can be both profound and long lasting. Research with people who rarely or never visit museums has consistently shown that they have very negative expectations. These expectations are nearly always based upon bad experiences of museums in childhood.
So I say do not be afraid of admitting to mistakes, rather revel in the knowledge and experience that you gain. Maybe that is a lesson even Napoleon might have benefited from.