Understanding Audience and Experience at the Cambridge Science Festival

Program Strategy and Evaluation
Written By Cathy Sigmond

Client: MIT Museum | Location: Cambridge, MA

 
 

We explored visitor characteristics and experiences at two events that are part of the MIT Museum’s Cambridge Science Festival.

OVERVIEW

The Cambridge Science Festival is a week-long festival produced by the MIT Museum with many events taking place across the city. Cambridge Science Festival has run for over 15 years, and the MIT Museum was curious to better understand its audiences and their experiences at two unique events: a family-friendly event called the Science Carnival and an event for adults called Electric Skin, which explored intersections of fashion, science, and technology.

APPROACH

We designed an exit survey to be administered to participants at both events. The survey included a combination of demographic questions to understand visitor characteristics, as well as questions about participants’ motivations for attending, awareness of MIT Museum’s relationship to the Cambridge Science Festival, and their event experience.

CLIENT TAKEAWAYS

Our results from the demographic questions helped the MIT Museum understand who is (and who is not) attending Cambridge Science Festival events. Moreover, survey data showed that Electric Skin and the Science Carnival served two distinctly different audiences (as MIT Museum suspected) and helped these audiences engage with science in different ways. Electric Skin participants thought deeply about the connections between science and art, while the Science Carnival encouraged fascination with science. And, importantly, we found participants had relatively low awareness that the Cambridge Science Festival and its associated events are produced by the MIT Museum. This presents an opportunity for the MIT Museum to raise its profile with the local community through highlighting the Museum’s relationship with the well-loved Cambridge Science Festival.

Cathy Sigmond

Cathy brings many years of experience in education and experience design to her role as Head of Strategy at Kera Collective. 

Having previously worked in a variety of educational settings, Cathy is driven by her constant fascination and delight at how people make discoveries about the familiar and the unfamiliar. 

Cathy loves helping to shape experiences that spark curiosity and make a difference in people’s lives. She particularly enjoys the rapid, iterative nature of design-based research and the deep insights that come from qualitative research, especially on projects exploring interactions with the digital and built environments. 

Cathy shares her passion for experience design research widely and regularly guest lectures for graduate programs, including the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Exhibition and Experience Design Program and the Pratt Institute’s School of Information. Cathy served as the co-chair of the Museum Computer Network’s Human-Centered Design special interest group from 2018-2021.

Outside of work, you can usually find Cathy playing soccer, thrifting, or making her way through her large cookbook collection. 

Cathy’s favorite museum experiences are immersive; she will always vividly remember walking through the giant heart at the Franklin Institute, being surrounded by birds at the Peabody Essex Museum, and hearing centuries-old instruments come to life at the Museum of Musical Instruments. 

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