A Quiet Unease About Timing and Tracking Observations in Museums
In museum evaluation, timing and tracking observations have long been considered a tried-and-true way to get “objective,” unobtrusive data about visitor behavior. Timing and tracking (or T&T, for short), refers to a specific observational method where researchers follow a visitor through a gallery or exhibition, noting where they go, how long they stay, and what they do. Done well, it’s discreet. The visitor doesn’t know they’re being observed, which is the point—we want to capture natural behavior. These observations provide museum teams with vital insights into what people do when they visit museums, answering questions like: How long do visitors spend in my exhibition? What exhibits are most-visited? What proportion of visitors to this exhibition take photographs, sit down, or converse with others? (And so many more).
I’ve led many T&T studies, from those focused on specific galleries to an entire museum floor to a whole museum, and have seen firsthand the kind of lightbulb moments unobtrusive observational data can spark for exhibition designers, museum educators, and others. Recently, however, I’ve been sitting with a different kind of data: my own discomfort—a quiet unease that grew too loud to ignore.
This post, adapted from a presentation I gave with Tara Miller, Emily Berg, and Teresa Norman at the 2025 Visitor Studies Association conference (VSA), explores the ethical complexities of timing and tracking observations and why I’ve begun to question a method I once loved without hesitation.
Timing and Tracking Has a Past—and a Future—to Reckon With
Timing and tracking observations have a long history in museums. Even in the early 20th century, museums were tracking visitor behavior. More recently, practitioners like John Falk and Lynn Dierking, Stephen Bitgood, and Beverly Serrell (to name a few) helped shape and formalize the practices we now associate with T&T. Their work emphasized the value of unobtrusive behavioral data in creating more effective exhibitions and is foundational to the museum evaluation field.
And yet, our collective understanding of privacy, surveillance, and consent has evolved. What might have previously felt neutral or benign now comes with added weight. We live in a time where people—particularly people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and others from historically marginalized communities—are justifiably wary of being watched, tracked, or recorded without their knowledge. While evaluators often describe our work as driven by curiosity, what happens when that curiosity collides with the realities of surveillance culture and systemic inequities?
I’m not the only one thinking about this. Graduate students I teach often express discomfort with the idea of timing and tracking observations. "Why are we allowed to watch people without their permission in museums?" they wonder. "Isn’t that...weird?" They’re right to ask.
Still, I don’t think that being curious to learn how visitors use and experience a museum space is inherently bad. But we should pause and ask harder ethical questions before treating timing and tracking as a go-to method to answer our questions.
Ethical Considerations for Timing and Tracking
So, when is timing and tracking the right tool, and what needs to be taken into account for it to be used ethically?
I’ve found it helpful to frame my thinking around three interrelated concepts:
1. Positionality
Who is doing the observing? What are their identities, biases, and lived experiences? How do those intersect with the people being observed? Too often, these dynamics are invisible in museum evaluation—but they matter deeply. A white data collector tracking a visitor of color might be perceived very differently than if the roles were reversed.
Case in point: in a recent reflection, data collector Samantha Snow described tracking a Black visitor during their nearly four-hour museum visit for one of our projects. Though Samantha followed protocol, the visitor later shared that they felt surveilled—a moment that pushed me, Samantha, and the museum to confront the deeper power dynamics of this method.
Gender matters, too, shaping how easily a data collector is accepted (or not) in a space. For example, one VSA session attendee shared that male data collectors they had trained later expressed discomfort observing female visitors, worried they were making them uneasy. On the other hand, my co-presenter Tara, noted that as a mid-thirties, cis-passing woman, she blended easily into a children’s museum setting while she was doing observations—in part because visitors assumed she “belonged” there.
All of this underscores how who does the observing directly shapes how observations are perceived, received, and experienced and how important it is to have ongoing conversations about positionality with anyone doing observations.
2. Informed Consent
Timing and tracking studies rely on the idea that if visitors don’t know they’re being observed, they’ll act “naturally”—and it’s that unfiltered behavior we’re interested in. So, we often just... don’t ask for consent. But is unobtrusiveness a feature, or a flaw of timing and tracking observations? Why are we so comfortable collecting data without explicit consent? What does it say about the kind of relationships we want to have with our visitors?
Many museums rely on passive approaches, like posting signs in galleries to inform visitors that observations are happening. Here’s the irony: we know—thanks to years of T&T studies—that visitors rarely stop to read signs or labels. Their attention is scattered, with brief moments of focus. So can we really say consent is meaningful if the message is buried?
What would it look like to move beyond signage and toward more active forms of gaining consent? In our session, many attendees expressed a strong preference for cued observation methods over fully unobtrusive ones. That raises its own question: if a visitor knows they’re being watched, is it still a timing and tracking observation at all?
3. Fairness, Justice, and Transparency
Who benefits from timing and tracking data? Who might be harmed, or feel alienated, by the method itself? Whose safety might you be putting at risk through your observations?
These aren’t just philosophical questions. In our conference presentation, Teresa Norman shared that the Walters Art Museum intentionally chose not to conduct timing and tracking observations in a new gallery featuring Latino artists, out of concern that being watched could trigger associations with ICE surveillance. That choice—to prioritize visitor safety and comfort over evaluative convenience—is a powerful example of a museum taking steps to be truly visitor-centered.
Timing and Tracking Alternatives Worth Considering
Do you really need timing and tracking to answer your evaluation questions? Or is it simply familiar? It’s easy to default to the methods and tools we know and love, but sometimes slowing down and considering alternatives can yield better and more ethical results.
If your goal is to understand visitor behavior in museums, timing and tracking observations aren’t your only option.
Scan or sweep observations allow you to step back and observe a whole space rather than track individuals, and are useful for capturing data about group dynamics and spatial use. We’ve used them to understand visitor pain points in the International Spy Museum’s galleries (ironically fitting) and to help the United States Botanic Garden understand how people spend time in an outdoor garden.
Walk-and-talk interviews, where you accompany a visitor and talk with them about their visit experience in real time, are a more conversational alternative. While not an observation per se, they introduce informed consent and transparency into the equation, and can offer rich insight into how visitors experience a space in their own words.
Retroactive pathway mapping is great when you want spatial data grounded in memory. At the end of a visit, ask visitors to draw the path they remember taking. It won’t capture every place they visited—most visitors will leave something out—or time spent, but it reveals what stood out to them and why.
Cued observations, where visitors know they are being observed, are worth considering too. Yes, awareness may shift otherwise “natural” behavior—something you should definitely account for in your analysis—but it also allows for meaningful consent and opens the door to transparent conversations about how visitors’ data will be used to improve the museum experience.
All of these choices shed light on what visitors do in museum spaces—and in many cases, add the layer of why—without needing to follow an individual person.
Reconsidering Our Relationships to Timing and Tracking Observations
Despite its many complexities, I’m still a huge fan of timing and tracking observations—not just because of the robust creativity that goes into designing these studies, but because I have seen how the data can inspire thoughtful action toward more visitor-centered practices in museums. Still, I no longer approach timing and tracking observations as casually as before. I don’t assume that because it’s “just observation,” it’s free from consequences. Every method we choose says something about our values and about the relationship we want to cultivate between museums and their audiences.
If you’re a museum professional or evaluator, I invite you to reconsider your relationship with timing and tracking observations. Not to abandon them, but to approach them with more intentionality.
Ask yourself:
What do I hope to learn? Is timing and tracking the best way to learn it?
Who is designing the study, timing and tracking form, and collecting the data? What effect might their positionalities have on a visitor being observed?
What safeguards related to consent and transparency can I build into the timing and tracking observation process?
Am I truly open to pivots, both big and small, at all stages of the research, based on what I learn along the way?
And most importantly: How can I uphold the dignity, safety, and comfort of visitors while still gathering meaningful data?