MAtics
Museum Analytics (MAtics) is a research project that explores how data science and computer vision techniques can provide audience analytics in museums. The project was funded through the Research Excellence Programme by the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST)
Funding
Research Excellence Programme
Year
2021-22
Category
Research & Development
Type of Work
Computer Vision
Data Science
Artificial Intelligence
Visitor Experience
Over the past decade, technology has advanced at such a pace as to allow the digitisation and automation of processes and allow specialised software the ability to understand and interpret information. In tandem with this technological growth museums are increasingly implementing design and evaluation practices that allow them to measure visitor’s experience. This ‘visitor-centred’ approach puts the museum’s content as well as the visitor’s experience on equal footing. In this research, techniques used to automate user (visitor) journey mapping used in a variety of different industries are adapted to museum research.
Through the application of Computer Vision (CV) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) a visitor’s experience in the museum is preserved from the moment they step into the museum up until they leave. This process allows the museum management and other stakeholders to understand how the museum goer is interacting with the museum, this includes the path they take when navigating different rooms, the emotion they display when looking at different artefacts and installations in the museum as well as measuring other information such as age and gender by making use of the latest deep learning models. All this information is then collated and presented to the museum management team as a report which gives the curator the information needed to take the necessary decisions needed to improve the museum experience.
Press Coverage:
Technology and the evaluation of the museum visitor experience
The Malta Independent, 16th August 2022
Questioning the museum experience in the 21st century, The Malta Independent, 7th August 2022
