(2020) Social Meaning Mapping as a means of exploring visitors' practices in the museum (original) (raw)

Visitor Studies, 2020

Abstract

This paper introduces Social Meaning Mapping (SMM), a digital qualitative tool embedded in the Visitracker tablet-app. SMM is designed to be used post-visit by visitors to recount their experience in a museum room verbally and visually by marking it on an illustrated floor plan, using several paint tools. The app records their verbal and visual input. This paper details the theoretical underpinnings of the tool and exemplifies its use through two out of the nine Social Meaning Maps collected from nine groups (N= 21) visiting a gallery room at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, Norway. Each example represents one of the two ways in which visitors used the tool: (a) visitors co-created their path using one colored line and (b) visitors created two different paths using different colored lines. These two cases showcase how SMM as a tool for conducting visitor studies can complement third-person observations through timing and tracking conducted by the researcher with visitors’ self-reflections and thus, capture a more holistic snapshot of the museum experience.

Dimitra Christidou hasn't uploaded this paper.

Let Dimitra know you want this paper to be uploaded.

Ask for this paper to be uploaded.