I haven't gone back over our notes, but in the early stages of our
planning for the redesign of the "permanent" interpretive galleries of
the Oregon Historical Society in Portland in 1994, we asked a variety of
museum visitors to create several maps of the Oregon History gallery that
was then available. We were interested, particularly, in how well
visitors could reconstrust the major conceptual or thematic divisions of
the gallery; whether they could recall key artifacts or key concepts, and
which was more important; whether there were architectural, lighting, or
sensory impressions that were as "memorable" as the ostensible content of
the exhibit, whether visitors could elaborate on the levels of complexity
within a single element of the exhibit; and so on.  We learned a great
deal about different elements of the museum's basic constituency viewed
Oregon history, and their own place within it -- which was radically
different from the assumptions made by museum curators many years ago in
planning that particular exhibit.  It was relatively less valuable in
exploring general patterns of visitor behavior, as the exhibit studied
was rather different from anything we were planning.  We found it useful,
by the way, to pass out a series of almost-blank plans rather than have
participants  work on the same plans for the whole session.  We
videotaped the proceedings, but I haven't gone back to review the tape
for some time.  Good luck!
Richard Rabinowitz, President, American History Workshop, [log in to unmask]

On Wed, 22 Nov 1995, William H. Stirrat wrote:

> I am thinking about trying some conceptual mapping, asking visitors to draw
> a map of our exhibit hall, as they remember it.  Do any of you, who have
> tried this or something similar, have any suggestions?  My goal is to gain
> some idea of how various audiences "see" our hall.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Sincerely,
> Bill
>
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