Audience Research 2.0

As most of you know, I have been thinking lots about how the tools of the web will impact on audience research practices. I'm using Web 2.0 apps in several audience research experiments, with my overall premise being that these tools will fundamentally change the dynamic between visitors and museums and we need to re-think how we do evaluation - less focus on methodology and more on participation.

This is what will make museums relevant in my view - a move from visitor as participant to visitor as partner, being able to have their own say and share their own stories, both at physical sites and online (which will eventually converge).

To this end we are running another project using an exhibition development blog and Facebook group for the All About Evil exhibition. This project aims to:
* engage the audience in developing the exhibition at the front-end
* see if a blogging tool can do this
* see how we could use Facebook to engage a different audience
* track the time it takes for our input compared with the outcome

We'll keep you posted. I'll be blogging most of our progress here on Museum 3.0.