A Cautionary Tale About Audiences and Assumptions
Most museums have a generalized notion of their audiences. They may broadly refer to “families,” “empty nesters,” “locals,” and “tourists.” But those broad categories tell us very little about what audiences value, care about, and believe in.
Without truly knowing what makes people “tick,” museums are left with their assumptions, which can be dangerous. Assumptions are rooted in our internal biases and can prevent us from having perspective, which can then lead to stereotyping and misunderstanding. Relying on assumptions could have major negative consequences. It is always better to rely on data gathered from audiences so that you can meet audiences where they are.
A Case Study: How the Wild Center Created an Audience-Focused Climate Change Exhibition
One of our longtime clients, The Wild Center, provides a good example of how powerful it can be to know your audience. The Wild Center is a natural history museum located in the Adirondacks of New York that is deeply committed to connecting people to nature. In 2021, they were in the early stages of developing Climate Solutions, an exhibition designed to shift visitors from focusing on the problem of climate change to realizing the solutions that exist. They were grappling with how much background information they needed to provide in the exhibition before diving into solutions. Did their audience need to be convinced that climate change is real before they could be open to solutions? Did their audience need to understand the science behind climate change in order to appreciate the need for solutions?
Constrained by budget and square footage, knowing the answers to these questions was critical for The Wild Center. They decided to invite their audience to take an existing survey consisting of four multiple choice questions from Yale’s Six Americas Super Short Survey (SASSY). The museum administered the SASSY to a random sample of its visitors, pulled from their database of 2020-2021 visitors, which allowed them to map their audience across six well-recognized climate dispositions, from Dismissive to Alarmed.
Graphic created by Kera Collective using descriptions from Yale’s Six Americas Super Short Survey
Before fielding the survey, the museum had the foresight to survey their staff to gauge their assumptions about where they believed their audience would fall on the SASSY continuum. Staff assumed that their audience would be similar to the national average, spread across the middle and top of the continuum (Alarmed, Concerned, or Cautious), with a smaller portion of audience falling to the bottom (Dismissive, Doubtful, or Disengaged). They believed fewer than a quarter of their audience would be at the highest level, Alarmed.
To staff’s surprise, the audience research results came back substantially different from their assumptions. The survey showed that most of The Wild Center’s audience fell into the upper end of the SASSY continuum, with just over half in the Alarmed category and about one-third in the Concerned category. The data was so different from their assumptions that staff members were wary of trusting it. So, they sent the survey out a second time to a broader list of their visitors (who had been to their annual holiday event, Wild Lights) who they believed would be more representative of their “typical visitor.” The results (shown in the chart below) came back nearly identical.
The insights from the research helped The Wild Center focus their efforts on reaching visitors who were Alarmed and Concerned by developing key messages and underlying themes for their exhibit design approach to address the interests of those two groups. They did not need to spend significant time or valuable exhibition space convincing people about the reality of climate change; they could jump straight into addressing solutions head-on. At times, narrowing in on such specific audiences felt uncomfortable for the museum, and they wondered, is the data accurate? Does it reflect the audience who will show up to the exhibition, and if not, will we turn off large numbers of our visitors? But they trusted in and stuck to the data.
“I am so glad we polled staff as we have data about staff bias (including me!). Big lesson here is not to make assumptions; talk to visitors. We were all surprised about the degree to which 82 to 84% of our visitors were alarmed or concerned. It really freed us to narrow the target audience and focus [the exhibition].”
A year later, once the exhibition was installed and we had done the summative evaluation, the proof was in the pudding, so they say. It was invaluable for The Wild Center to recognize its audience is Alarmed or Concerned and looking for solutions. Our evaluation showed that the Wild Center was successful in creating a hopeful and engaging exhibition on climate solutions that resonated with its visitors. They did not miss the mark with large numbers of visitors, by any means.
Imagine if The Wild Center had gone ahead with their assumptions about the audience instead fielding the SASSY. They would have created an exhibition that was off kilter with their audience rather than meeting them exactly where they are.
