Books: Attention and Value: Keys to Understanding Museum Visitors
This book argues that museums need to effectively capture people’s attention if they are to communicate better with visitors. By Laura Crossley
By Stephen Bitgood, Left Coast Press, £21.50, ISBN 978-1-61132-263-7
At the start of this thought-provoking book about visitor attention, leading visitor researcher Stephen Bitgood outlines its key purposes: namely, to describe and analyse the “attention-value model” and to offer guidelines for practical application of theories relating to visitor attention in order to have a positive impact on visitor satisfaction.
Bitgood’s intriguing “attention-value model” (attention = detection + value), a model of visitor experience that he has developed using psychological and visitor research theories, is central to this book.
The model places the management of visitor attention at the core of exhibition success. This argues that the chances of a visitor paying attention to an element of an exhibition are directly related to how easy it is for the visitor to detect the stimulus and the perceived value associated with the experience of engaging attention.
To deeply engage with an object, a visitor’s attention must be captured and narrowly focused; the visitor must perceive that the object has a large value (utility or benefit divided by cost, where “utility” involves perceived satisfaction, benefit or reward, and “cost” means time, effort or money); and alternative objects or aspects of the environment to which the visitor could be paying attention have a lower or equal perceived value ratio compared with the object that they are looking it.
The publication has four sections, and includes a useful mix of theory and practical guidance. Each chapter begins with helpful Key Ideas, which succinctly summarise its major learning points.
Museum fatigue
Section one focuses on historical and current approaches to visitor attention, and includes an in-depth description of the attention-value model of visitors.
Section two is devoted to value and motivation. One chapter asks whether visitors will read long passages of text if they are sufficiently interested in the subject, and tentatively suggests that exhibition text should be easy to process so that even a visitor
who lacks interest in a subject is likely to feel that reading the passage is worth their time and effort.
Section three provides examples of how visitor attention might effectively be prompted, for example, via self-guided devices, by instructing visitors to describe or compare exhibit objects, and by supplementing audio messages with text.
The final section provides practical guidance on applying the attention-value model to the design and development of visitor experience. This includes a look at the phenomena associated with “museum fatigue” and offers helpful advice about how these might be minimised.
A practical Checklist for Managing Visitor Attention is included in the appendix to help museum professionals critically evaluate displays and meet the challenge of creating future exhibitions.
The checklist asks creators of exhibitions to consider visitor navigation and how to capture, focus and engage visitor attention, as well as visitor comfort, safety, satisfaction, curiosity and interest.
Attention and Value provides a valuable and comprehensive contribution to the body of research about visitor attention. Bitgood’s passion for the subject is apparent and the arguments he presents are all the more persuasive for this.
The reader is given a clear understanding of why, when and how people are motivated to pay attention to exhibits, and how this might be applied to exhibition design.
Practical suggestions
This book will form an important reference point for museum professionals, as well as students who wish to have a fuller understanding of the subject. Whatever our role in museums, it could be argued that we are all in the business of learning.
Bitgood’s assertion that learning is an outcome of paying attention and is not possible until visitors’ attention is focused and engaged on elements of an exhibition should be ignored at our peril.
This book allows the reader to consider, in theoretical and practical terms, what they might do to improve the design of exhibits and museum environments so that they capture and sustain people’s attention and, ultimately, better communicate with visitors.
Laura Crossley is a museum and heritage consultant