Back to the SSTM. Xin Ge lined up Mr. Zhang Dajin (张大谨), whose work in the Exhibition Education Section (展示教育处) includes audience research. Dan and I both had a sense that he was giving us a report, but he was good at it. Most of it was recorded, and that will be transcribed later. The good bits, as ever, came after the recorder was turned off.

First, he explained to us that they have 3 main types of audience research. One is the collection of basic statistics on what the age, educational background, etc etc is of visitors, how they knew about the museum and so on. He explained that they do this work by questionnaire interviews during busy times in the museum, such as the Spring Festival season. They wait until people are sitting on a break, and then ask, say, every 5 people.

Second are investigations into audience satisfaction on 12 aspects of service from ticket selling through to souvenirs. If I understood correctly, they do this every Wednesday (quiet day) and Saturday (busy day), doing more sampling on the busy day to be representative. Because people are asked why they are dissatisfied if they are, the transcription and analysis of material like this takes a while.

The third type are investigations at the behest of particular departments, such as the work they have been doing recently for Xin Ge’s department in connection with the plans to start regularly renovating and renewing galleries. In relation to this, they need to know what the audience enjoys in a particular gallery as well as what particular experts think is outdated and needs renewal. Here he spoke about doing a lot of research based on observing behaviour, e.g. how long people hang out at an exhibit, the expressions on their faces, etc. They also do individual interviews as part of this work. They report the information back to the commissioning department, which then analyzes it. They also do special investigations on temporary exhibitions, and investigations about members of the museum.

The first and second types of investigation form the bulk of their work. (Dan: They do the first two types of investigation every week, every month and every year.)

After the recorder was turned off, we talked more. He explained that the wide range of methods also included online research and telephone interviews. For the observation of behaviour, he spoke about choosing people and following them unobserved, and how he often employed college students to do this work.

He explained that the material they gather is circulated internally, but not made public or shared to any large degree with others. (Dan: They have an SSTM internal magazine. Sometimes the results are published in that magazine. )

We had a discussion about touch screens. When I told him that people seem to be happy spending quite a lot of time with them in London, he said touch screens had not proved popular previously in Shanghai. 40% of respondents told them they came to the museum for a good time, and having fun is their number one priority. Mr. Zhang feels that it is unlikely that Chinese visitors want to find what they could equally well find on the web, for example. They could do that at home. They have paid for a ticket (unlike London) and they don’t want to waste their time doing something they could do outside. Also, there is so much pressure on Chinese kids at school now, their parents want them to have a break from textbook-based schoolwork when they come to the museum. Mr. Zhang expressed the opinion that kids in the UK already have a good quality of life, and that parents here are getting more concerned about quality of life.

After our interview with Mr. Zhang, I went back into the museum, as I have become more interested in different kinds of “interactivity”. Coming to this initially from our screen project, I thought of this mostly in terms of interaction with screens. Then Xin Ge’s essay made me a bit doubtful about that — does touching a screen mean there is real mental interaction? Now, I’m also more and more interested in the idea of an embodied experience of the museum as another kind of interaction, and also the question of interaction amongst visitors.

I entered about11. It was a busy Saturday. I went up to the 3^rd floor and walked into the World of Robots. There was a Robot Calisthenics exhibit going on — industrial robots dancing, basically. Not much chance for direct physical interaction here, but parents were busy holding the kids up and talking to them. I got a very strong sense that it is families that come to the museum, and they come because the museum helps them to have family quality time. Contrary to what Mr. Zhang said, a bank of screens and benches activated by ball mouse was well-patronized. I found this in various other places. Although screens you could not activate with a mouse — i.e. ones you just looked at — were ignored, those you could do things with were popular. Again, each bench seemed to accommodate a little nuclear family (as we saw before at the IBM-sponsored benches.) In the World of Robots hall, the two exhibits that got a line of people waiting to take part were the archery contest (compete against robots) and a karaoke show where the kids sign along while a robot plays the piano. Heaps of interactivity, and very embodied and physical.

Downstairs in Light of Wisdom, the brainwave thing continued to be very popular — again, a very embodied exhibit!

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