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"Bitgood, Stephen"
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Attention and value
How can museums capture visitors' attention? And how can their attention be sustained? In this important volume, leading visitor researcher and educational psychologist Stephen Bitgood proposes a model-the attention-value model-that will help museum practitioners create more effective museum environments. A major advance beyond earlier efforts, the attention-value model shows how both personal and exhibit design variables influence the capture, focus, and engagement of attention. Bitgood also offers extensive background in the visitor attention literature, details of his extensive testing of the attention-value tool, and guidelines for its application. Balancing theory, research, and practical application, Attention and Value is a must-read for exhibition developers at all levels-from students to seasoned practitioners.
eBook
The Effects of Gallery Changes on Visitor Reading and Object Viewing Time
Systematic changes were made in an Egyptian mummy exhibit gallery, and visitor reactions were assessed. The changes included adding exhibit labels to the wall, changing the physical characteristics of these labels, and introducing a bronze bust reconstructed from a mummified individual. Results demonstrated that several of the factors studied influence label reading: (a) words per label, (b) size of letters, and (c) location of labels. For the most part, label reading facilitated visitor attention to exhibit objects rather than competed for visitor attention. An exception to the facilitation of attention occurred when the mummy cases and the labels were arranged so that visitors had to turn from the label to view the cases (or vice versa). This latter arrangement seemed to produce competition for visitor attention and resulted in shorter viewing times of the mummy cases. Another competing situation occurred when the bronze bust was introduced, apparently diverting attention from label reading to the bust.
Journal Article
Environmental Design and Evaluation in Museums
Gives a brief history and scope of visitor studies. Outlines exhibit development and design emphasizing the need for evaluation at each of its 3 stages. Also comments on programme design, general facility design and visitor services.
Journal Article
Prompting Engaged Attention by Instructions to Describe or Compare Exhibit Objects
The attention-value model expresses that exhibit design elements can prompt multiple functions: capturing visitor attention, changing the visitor traffic flow and creating deeper visitor attention engagement. The life-sized animal cutouts provide visitors with information not available by directly observing the animals. The cutouts also served as a background for interpretive labels. In addition, when multiple species are contained in the same exhibit space, shape identification may occur more easily with the aid of the cutouts. The positions of the Sitatunga and Greater Kudu cutouts were reversed so that the Kudu was placed on the main path and the Sitatunga was placed along the Overlook Trail. During the initial placement of the cutouts, visitors were least likely to read the Thompson's Gazelle cutout. The fact that a higher percentage of visitors read the Greater Kudu label than the Sitatunga label could have been due to either the position of the respective cutouts or to the cutout characteristics.
Book Chapter
How Label Placement Influences Visitor Attention
This chapter deals with several phenomena associated with decreased attention. In most cases, physical fatigue and information overload seem to play less of a role in attention decrements because most museums visits are not prolonged and visitors usually are in control of how much simultaneous information they deal with. Melton argued that every object competes for attention with every other object that is visually available at any moment. Measures of fatigue have varied from the percentage stopping at an exhibit element, to total time viewing, to time sampling the focus of visitor attention, and finally to self-reports of boredom and/or physical or mental tiredness/exhaustion. 'Museum fatigue' has been a difficult phenomenon to define as well as to measure. Robinson and Melton were perhaps the first to suggest that \"object satiation\" occurs in a museum setting. There is a strong misconception among both visitors and museum professionals that museum fatigue is inevitable, and that it cannot be eliminated.
Book Chapter
Visitor Navigation and Attention
Visitor attention is deeply intertwined with orientation and circulation (collectively called \"navigation\").
Book Chapter
Review of Visitor Attention Theories and Models
This chapter illustrates the variety of ways engaged attention can be tied to inferred outcomes. The variety of outcomes listed in this chapter give testimony both to the richness of deeply engaged attention and to the imaginations of those who have proposed these outcomes. Minda Borun's work on family learning with the Philadelphia collaborative (PISEC) project provides a methodology to measure different levels of engaged attention related to informal learning. Using a constructivist rationale, John Falk has suggested Personal Meaning Mapping (PMM) as a method for assessing learning in exhibit environments. Other inferred outcomes in this chapter refer to a more holistic, complex experience than may be involved with learning: simulated immersion, flow, attention restoration, and empathetic dramatic engagement. Harvey, Loomis, Bell, and Marino found similar results at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science: visitors' feelings of immersion were correlated with interactive components, multisensory stimulation, and dynamic displays.
Book Chapter
Prompting Attention with a Large Interpretive Background
This chapter provides a guide for managing visitor attention based on the attention-value model. It attempts to conceptually organize under the rubric of the attention-value model what we know about visitor research in a way that helps to identify strengths and weaknesses of exhibitions and suggests cost-effective ways to improve their overall visitor impact. The items in the guide identify many of the most important factors that influence the management of visitor attention. Based on a three-stage analysis of visitor attention, the guidelines were designed to organize the visitor research literature in a way meaningful to users. The attention-value model provides a tool for both analyzing and solving potential problems. The table includes a number of problems that span the continuum of attention from capture to deep engagement. There are a number of physical and mental states that can either increase or decrease the level of attention given to exhibitions and programs.
Book Chapter