D. Neil Bremer Wrote:
>> Matthew White said:
>> <Visitor service is not rocket science or even political science.
>
> Interesting...
> For not being so difficult, why do I continuously see museums, both
> large and small, have great difficulty in planning for visitors?
> Why are we still designing museum spaces that need correction within a
> year because of a "visitor problem".
> Why are we so threatened by understanding and incorporating the
> visitor's perspective?
> Why do wonderful people with advanced degrees in their chosen museum
> field assume they naturally know how to plan for, understand, and talk
> to visitors?
>
> If it's SOOooooo easy, why is it an ongoing debate on this list and in
> museums across the country?
>
> [log in to unmask]
> www.bremercommunications.com
Since this phrase has touched a nerve, allow me to rephrase as I seemed to
have done so poorly the first time. Good visitor service is not complicated.
We (those people who work daily with the public) know or should know the
basic ingredients of good visitor and/or customer service. There is plenty
of literature by excellent authors on this topic from museum design, to
exhibit design, to label writing, to store design, or whatever and no
shortage of workshops that one can attend in the museum field and without.
While we may not agree on some particulars and different groups of visitors
may need different things and different museums have different challenges,
the basics are all available to anyone who searches. Some of it, btw, can be
found in the literature or workshops of our retail competitors and in the
business section of the local book store.
Just because something is not complicated, doesn't make it easy. We may
know what to do, but lack the patience, time, budget, training, will, or
institutional priorities to put into place those things that have been
proven to work. And I also readily recognize that there are difficult
situations that will never conform to what we expect and we cannot please
everyone. I also recognize that expectations change over time and space and
that constant study is needed.
Just because I think something isn't "rocket science" it doesn't follow that
I think it is either naturally intuitive or requires no study, application,
or keeping up on the literature. Nor does it mean that I do not think there
are levels of skill, experience, and knowledge. I will readily admit that
history is not rocket science, but doing it right is no easy task.
In the context of the Visitor Charters discussion (which has now been shown
to be a misunderstanding) I maintain that those museums that do not take
simple visitors services seriously, writing a visitor's charter won't help.
For example, the gum chewing, inattentive floor interpreter I recently ran
into probably wouldn't change her ways one way or another if her museum had
one. A simple concept: Don't chew gum when talking to visitors. That's easy!
It's not rocket science. Yet this museum could not get it right because
watching every interpreter all the time on a large staff can be difficult.
And as far as applying the more esoteric findings of visitors studies and
exhibit evaluators (not typically the milieu of floor staff, which is where
this discussion began) even when it is done correctly and it is %100
successful, if you put people on your floor who do not do the simple things
correctly, all your work and planning is for nothing. To paraphrase a
speaker on museum security I once heard, you can spend millions of dollars
on an exhibit, but if you hire minimum wage interpreters (and I would add
train them in, yes, the simple techniques of good public service) you have
yourself a minimum wage exhibit. All those millions in exhibit design won't
help if your interpreters (paid or volunteer) are surfing the net on exhibit
computers, in the corner flirting with each other, or are rude to visitors.
All simple concepts, but ignored throughout the industry on museum floors
everywhere. Which isn't to say all docents, tour guides, or interpreters are
like this. Most are not.
I'll refer to the charters written by the museums linked in the message that
started this thread. Does anything in any of them strike you as complicated?
Difficult to enforce, perhaps, if your museum hasn't the priority to deal
with them, but definitely not complicated.
I also think I made an error by implicitly lumping those who do visitors
studies and exhibit evaluation in with those of us who implement the
findings of their work. The context of the discussion was on implementing
this work (which I assumed was the point of writing a visitors charter), and
I maintain it is simpler than most people think, if difficult in practice.
This does not apply to those who wade hip deep into statistical analysis and
other types of research. This CAN be rocket science and I admire their work,
because I know I haven't the skill or patience. My apologies if I have
offended those professionals.
I also do not agree with this post in that it seems to imply that if it were
all so easy we would all stop debating, discussing, and arguing about the
issue, and we would all instantly start implementing these concepts. I find
this to bordering on the humorous. I can think of no issue in any profession
that ever dies, regardless of how much support there is to settle debate. It
is in the nature of what we do and who we are as humans, and god love us for
it. I would have it no other way. Foolish consensus is the hob-goblin of a
stagnant profession.
--
Matthew White
Director of Museums
Mount Washington Observatory
www.mountwashington.org
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