Making sense of visitors’ sense-making experiences: the REMIND method
Daniel Schmitt, Michel Labour
Abstract
Ten years of studying museum visitors’ sense-making processes have led to developing two in situ research methods. First, from a conceptual ‘enactive’ perspective, our REMIND method seeks to understand more clearly visitors’ sense-making processes. This involves employing an eye-tracker video recording of visitors’ gaze points as the basis of semi-guided interviews conducted on the site of the museum immediately after the visit. Second, our E-MOTION method traces visitors’ paths in the museum linked to their declared level of emotions. In doing this, the method creates an emotion-map of a visitor’s journey in the museum. The two methods identify museum features conducive to sense-making, which can be linked to Gardner’s (1993) multiple intelligences, and to disengaging ‘sense-wrecking’.