Wei, Dingyi; (2025) Deviations: Exploring Intended and Deviated Visitor Experiences with Museum Exhibitions. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Museum Exhibitions in the 21st century are increasingly involving exhibits in a variety of forms, such as interactive interfaces and multimedia installations. Visitor experiences are becoming more complex with respect to their interactions with the exhibitions as well as the outcomes of these interactions. Considering such complexity, this thesis raises the question of whether actual visitor experiences are consistent with the intentions of museum professionals, such as the curators and designers who have curated and delivered the exhibitions. Although existing studies have acknowledged the differences between professionals’ intentions and visitors’ actual experiences, there is a lack of systematic studies investigating them and a gap in knowledge in theoretical frameworks to describe and explain such differences. Building on existing knowledge from human-computer interaction and museum studies, this thesis defines the differences between the professionals’ intentions and actual visitor experiences as Deviations and the visitor experiences as Deviated Visitor Experiences. It proposes a deviation model that represents deviations and presents four case studies that address deviations as well as the underlying factors from multiple perspectives. Based on the analyses of systematic observations and surveys of visitor’s experiences and through interviews with professionals in selected case studies, this thesis extends the deviation model and proposes a three-step framework that can be adopted to describe deviations in a variety of contexts. It then summarizes and discusses the factors that lead to deviations. The research contributes to museum studies by offering methods and insights to help museum professionals better understand exhibition visitors and their experiences, and it provides perspectives for museum professionals and scholars to rethink the relationship between contemporary museum exhibitions and visitors. The proposed deviation model and the framework will also contribute to studying deviated user experiences in HCI studies.

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