Museums are slowly falling in love with the idea of ‘big data’ as a means of understanding visitors. In truth, there is not much that is ‘big’ about the datasets that most museums hold, but big data’s analysis techniques offer new and more sophisticated ways of looking at our audiences and how they interact with museums.
Potentially, big data’s methods can be used to demonstrate educational and social impact, and to make the case for museums. They can also be used to improve and refine museums’ offer to visitors.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s Friends scheme takes only the data that visitors willingly offer, and uses it to understand their behaviour in order to drive repeat visits. But in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency revelations, there is a whiff of surveillance about all data collecting.
Maybe the bigger danger is that by looking at our visitors only as data points, we produce predictable museum experiences that exclude the irregular, strange or wonderful.
In his 2007 work Measuring the Universe, artist Roman Ondák asked visitors to simply record their heights on a gallery wall. The resulting group of marks says more about a collective museum experience than a bar graph ever could.
Perhaps museums should strive to use data in similarly beautiful and elegant ways.
Danny Birchall is the digital manager at the Wellcome Collection
Potentially, big data’s methods can be used to demonstrate educational and social impact, and to make the case for museums. They can also be used to improve and refine museums’ offer to visitors.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s Friends scheme takes only the data that visitors willingly offer, and uses it to understand their behaviour in order to drive repeat visits. But in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency revelations, there is a whiff of surveillance about all data collecting.
Maybe the bigger danger is that by looking at our visitors only as data points, we produce predictable museum experiences that exclude the irregular, strange or wonderful.
In his 2007 work Measuring the Universe, artist Roman Ondák asked visitors to simply record their heights on a gallery wall. The resulting group of marks says more about a collective museum experience than a bar graph ever could.
Perhaps museums should strive to use data in similarly beautiful and elegant ways.
Danny Birchall is the digital manager at the Wellcome Collection