Interpersonalizing Intimate Museum Experiences

Abstract

We reflect on two museum visiting experiences that adopted the strategy of interpersonalization in which one visitor creates an experience for another. In the Gift app, visitors create personal mini-tours for specific others. In Never let me go , one visitor controls the experience of another by sending them remote instructions as they follow them around the museum. By reflecting on the design of these experiences and their deployment in museums we show how interpersonalization can deliver engaging social visits in which visitors make their own interpretations. We contrast the approach to previous research in customization and algorithmic personalization. We reveal how these experiences relied on intimacy between pairs of visitors but also between visitors and the museum. We propose that interpersonalization requires museums to step-back to make space for interpretation, but that this then raises the challenge of how to reintroduce the museum's own perspective. Finally, we articulate strategies and challenges for applying this approach.

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.…”

“…Many conventional uses of data, especially in recent years within the GLAM sector, are driven by a desire to personalize experiences. In contrast, our experiences involve the approach of interpersonalization in which visitors tailor experiences for each other, either indirectly, such as by sharing stories in VRtefacts , or directly, as in the overt interpersonalization of making a gift for another (Ryding et al , 2021) and so seeing the museum through their eyes (Spence et al , 2019). Interestingly, this involves the museum stepping back from its role of being the exclusive interpreter of artifacts to instead scaffold others in doing at least some of this interpretation for each other.…”

“…Driven by perspectives from post-colonial studies, many museums are already sensitive about misappropriating other cultures’ artifacts. Such sensitivities will be heightened when visitors are then invited to appropriate them for themselves, especially as part of activities that could – even if not the intention – be seen to trivialize them, for example making a personal gift of them (Ryding et al , 2021). Tensions stemming from divergence between the Global North and the Global South are likely to continue, as the response to COVID-19 and any future global pandemics so obviously favors the wealthier nations, who historically tend to be the ones holding the artifacts of the less wealthy.…”

“…Our second case study is the Gift app (Spence et al , 2019; Ryding et al , 2021), a mobile phone-based experience that enabled museum visitors to create a gift for a friend or family member by selecting up to three objects from the museum, taking a photo of each object, and recording a personal message about why they have chosen each object for that person. In this way, gift-givers can compose a personally meaningful hybrid physical/digital experience for a recipient, who can then “unwrap” and experience their gift of digital data during a visit to the museum – or, if a visit is not possible, from wherever they are.…”

“…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). All three of these cases create interpersonalized and intimate visiting experiences.…”