Improving the Visitor Experience with Data, with Ryan Auster

If we’re not studying our visitors, how can we fulfill our mission?

What is a net promoter score? And what should a museum’s net promoter score be? How do you ask a survey question if you want a meaningful answer? What is capacity building? What is COVES, and how can people get involved with it?

Ryan Auster (Manager of Learning Metrics, Museum of Science, Boston) discusses “Improving Visitor Experience with Data” with MtM host Jonathan Alger (Managing Partner, C&G Partners | The Exhibition and Experience Design Studio).

Along the way: OERs, excellent vs outstanding, and statistics 101.

Talking Points:

1. What is visitor studies?
2. What is COVES (Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies)?
3. Net Promoter Scores & Overall Experience Ratings
4. Drowning in data, but starving for wisdom
5. The Voice of the Visitor
6. How to join the COVES movement

How to Listen:

Listen on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/making-the-museum/id1674901311 

Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6oP4QJR7yxv7Rs7VqIpI1G 

Listen at Making the Museum, the Website:
https://www.makingthemuseum.com/podcast

Links to Every Podcast Service, via Transistor:
https://makingthemuseum.transistor.fm/

Guest Bio:

Dr. Ryan Auster (he/him) is the Manager of Learning Metrics at the Museum of Science, Boston (MOS) where he serves as the Project Director of the Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies (COVES), a research initiative with 100+ museum members across the United States and Canada. Ryan has a passion for simplifying messy data, advocating for visualizations that tell stories to inform decision making and improve societal outcomes, and believes that collaborative projects make for stronger work. Before joining the museum field, he was a professional ski bum and an amateur long-distance athlete, but now he just chases his two young sons for physical activity.

About Making the Museum:

Making the Museum is a newsletter and podcast on exhibitions, written and hosted by Jonathan Alger. MtM is a project of C&G Partners | The Exhibition and Experience Design Studio.

Learn more about the creative work of C&G Partners:
https://www.cgpartnersllc.com/

Links for This Episode:

Ryan Auster: rauster@mos.org

COVES: www.understandingvisitors.org

Visitor Studies Association: www.visitorstudies.org

Museum of Science, Boston: www.mos.org

Links for Making the Museum, the Podcast:

Contact Making the Museum:
https://www.makingthemuseum.com/contact

Host Jonathan Alger, Managing Partner of C&G Partners, on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanalger

Email Jonathan Alger:
alger@cgpartnersllc.com

C&G Partners | The Exhibition and Experience Design Studio:
https://www.cgpartnersllc.com/

Making the Museum, the Newsletter:

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