Museums are implementing more and more service design practices, such as visitor journey mapping, as a way of better understanding and designing the visitor experience. This tool serves to illustrate the experience with a service or a product provided by an organization. Visually, a journey map includes a timeline which shows chronologically underneath the touchpoints, actions, feelings, thoughts, pain points and other elements of the visitor experience. These journey components, which are outlined in the vertical axis, may change depending on the type of organizations, the priorities or internal initiatives that shape this experience. This visualization usually shows the time in the horizontal axis, normally broken down in the key stages of the customer journey. A key element in this visual is the representation of the highs and lows of the experience so it allows quick identification of the areas that work well and the areas that need improvements.
Several museums have used visitor journey mapping to better understand the visitor experience. Here are some examples
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Last year I collaborated with the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, where I started my museum career, to develop a visitor journey map. After a review of their strategic documents and available visitor research, I conducted a workshop with the participation of staff members from various departments to develop visitor journey maps for four audience segments.
This work demonstrated the effectiveness of this tool when it comes to identifying the potential areas for improvement, specifically for the physical context of the visitor experience. Most importantly, it highlights the need for museums to break the traditional silos and work across departments in order to define and implement a holistic and integrated visitor experience.
You can read more about this research on this paper published in the Museum Management and Curatorship journal:
Villaespesa, E., and Álvarez, A. (2019) ‘Visitor journey mapping at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza: bringing cross-departmental collaboration to build a holistic and integrated visitor experience’, Museum Management and Curatorship, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2019.1638821
