A Shoe Is a Shoe Is a Shoe: Interpersonalization and Meaning-making in Museums – Research Findings and Design Implications

Abstract

Digital technology is increasingly used to enhance museum experiences for visitors. Concurrently, research shows that people seldom visit museums alone, yet design often focusses on creating individual experiences. This article addresses this conundrum by examining visitor's social interaction and meaning-making in museums in order to provide empirical results actionable for design. It does so through an ethnographic approach combining observations and extended focus group interviews in an analogue museum. Results highlight how museums are social spaces, made so by active participant visitors. Processes of social meaning-making occur as visitors draw on objects in social identity-making and recontextualizationlinking the past to the present-, play, share knowledge, and engage in embodied practices. The study suggests shifting from designing personalized toward interpersonal experiences. Four design sensitivities are presented: Interpersonalized meaning-making, playful sociality, social information sharing, and social movement.

Data-inspired co-design for museum and gallery visitor experiences

“…First is the approach of interpersonalization (Eklund, 2020; Ryding et al , 2021). Many conventional uses of data, especially in recent years within the GLAM sector, are driven by a desire to personalize experiences.…”

“…A third concept at play in museums is co-interpretation, which involves users in ascribing meaning to materials in collections (Boehner et al , 2005; Marselis, 2011; Eklund, 2020), typically by interpreting existing materials in new ways. In considering how museums support learning, Yuan (2018) describes how co-interpretation may involve “interpersonal meaning-making in which learners' interpretative perspectives are influenced by their own experience and by interaction with the physical and social environment."…”

“…Furthermore, beyond the potential of personal data as a tool for personalization, Eklund (2020) recently suggested a shift from designing personalized experiences in which the museum tailors experiences for visitors to interpersonal ones in which visitors directly personalize experiences for each other. Ryding et al (2021) explores this further by comparing two applications that enable visitors to directly control how partners, friends, and family navigate and behave in the museum, including directing what they look at and how they look at it, or to indirectly control their visit by digitally wrapping exhibits in personal messages as gifts (as we discuss further below).…”

Playing Games with Tito

“…In subsequent years, similar concerns have often resurfaced, frequently referred to as "the heads-down phenomenon" [62,74,96,134]. In recent years, some research has focused on the use of technology to facilitate group interactions in museums, helping users in their attentional "balancing act" [138] between focusing on their phones and their surroundings [45,47,67].…”

Interpersonalizing Intimate Museum Experiences

“…In this article we explore a novel approach to personalization called interpersonalization (Eklund, 2020) in which one human personalizes the experience of another. We explore this idea in the context of museum visiting, considering how it can help museums respond to the need to diversify audiences, deliver meaningful experiences to individuals and incorporate digital technologies into hybrid experiences (Falk & Dierking, 2012;Parry, 2010;Simon, 2010).…”