Visitor studies

How do visitors use computer exhibits? Findings from 5 grueling years of watching visitors getting it wrong	Ben Gammon spent many years as Head of Visitor Studies at the Science Museum. Here's the benefit of his experience working with technologies from light beams to fingerprint scanners.
Design for museum visitors (1.36MB)	More from Ben Gammon. This presentation includes pictures of museum exhibits and galleries and tells you what visitors thought of them. Includes the best ever summary of why you need visitor studies - "visitors are weird".
Gallery-based technology and the museum visitor by Scott Sayre	This published paper considers the use of computer exhibits in four different art museums. Although it doesn't go into much depth its a useful discussion of what's out there and how well it works.
Are art museums serving our targeted audiences?	A Museums and the Web paper by Holly Witchey. She discusses what children like about museum web sites and tests some out. The kids don't mince any words - "It's not even close to exciting...".