Mapping Digital Pathways to Enhance Visitor Experience

Museums and cultural venues are increasingly focussed on enhancing the experience of their onsite visitors by providing mobile optimised digital resources direct to the visitor's smartphone or tablet. Apps, mobile sites and games are now common place within the museum, providing additional interpretation through text, audio and video content, or an immersive experience using sophisticated augmented and virtual reality platforms.
As well as offering an opportunity to push content to and engage with visitors, mobile offers museums a unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of their audiences: beacons and Wi-Fi triangulation allow visitors pathways through gallery spaces to be tracked in increasing detail, and what visitors choose to access on their device in certain physical spaces can provide significant insight into how they are engaging with the collections around them.
In this short lecture we will talk about some of the datasets now available to illuminate how visitors experience museums, and what this may mean for the future.