Collaborative Research: Perception, Behavior and Learning in the Museum

除了作为情感奖励和灵感来源的传统角色之外，艺术博物馆的现代使命是教育。感兴趣的对象在博物馆参观者跟随的叙事背景下呈现，以了解历史，材料，技术和功能，以及与自然世界和人类文明的关系。几十年来，展览设计的叙事原则是从对博物馆游客行为的小规模观察研究中产生的，比如参与的表达和路径的选择。基于对感觉处理和行为选择的科学理解的最新进展，结合描述行为细节的复杂计算工具，一个由科学家和博物馆专业人员组成的团队将把洛杉矶县艺术博物馆的一个指定画廊变成一个研究人类感知、行动、选择和学习的实验室。该项目的广泛应用目标是获取科学知识，以进一步增强博物馆的教育使命。该项目的智力影响将是提高对自然条件下指导人类行为的环境和社会因素的理解。更广泛地说，该项目将使建筑和设计专业人士的更大社区受益，作为实验方法的模型，并通过提供独特的多方面数据集来分析和评估建筑环境的影响。该项目建立在几项技术和计算创新的基础上。一种是计算行为学方法，这是一种定量行为分析的新方法，采用高分辨率3D运动捕捉和机器学习方法进行行为分类。这种方法将产生有效的非侵入性测量，包括访问者的位置、移动速度、姿势、社交互动、手势和表情，这些都反映了短暂的认知状态，比如视觉注意力和对艺术品的参与。对数以万计的匿名博物馆参观者的观察结果进行描述性统计分析，以深入了解展览设计的结构和内容与个人和社会群体行为之间的关系，并发现画廊不同位置的游客行为之间的时空偶然性。这些描述性分析的结果将用于开发游客行为的预测模型，捕捉游客与艺术作品和其他游客互动的个人风格的全部范围，了解游客的感官操作特征以及画廊空间的感官和运动启示。在项目的最后阶段，将对画廊设计进行战略性修改，以测试和进一步开发预测游客行为的预测模型。研究结果将为展览设计及其对参观者体验的影响提供一个新的实证框架。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In addition to their traditional role as a source of emotional rewards and inspiration, the modern mission of art museums is education. Objects of interest are presented in the context of a narrative that the museum visitor follows to learn history, materials, technique, and function, as well as relationships to the natural world and human civilization. Narrative principles for exhibition design have for decades emerged from small scale observational studies of museum visitor behaviors, such as expressions of engagement and choice of path. Building on recent advances in scientific understanding of sensory processing and behavioral choice, in combination with sophisticated computational tools for characterization of fine details of behavior, a team of scientists and museum professionals will turn a designated gallery at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art into a laboratory for investigation of human perception, action, choice, and learning. The broad applied goal of this project is to obtain scientific knowledge that will further enhance the educational mission of museums. The intellectual impact of the project will be an improved understanding of environmental and social factors that guide human behavior under naturalistic conditions. More generally, the project will benefit the larger communities of architecture and design professionals, as a model of experimental methodology and by offering a unique multifaceted dataset for analysis and evaluation of the influence of the built environment.The project builds upon several technological and computational innovations. One is the methods of computational ethology, which is a new approach to quantitative behavioral analysis that employs high-resolution 3D motion capture together with machine learning methods for behavioral classification. This approach will yield efficient non-invasive measurements of visitor locations, rates of movement, poses, social interactions, gestures and expressions that reflect transitory cognitive states, such as visual attention and engagement with works of art. Observations from tens of thousands of anonymous museum visitors will be subjected to descriptive statistical analyses, to gain insights into the relationship between the structure and content of exhibition design and the behavior of individuals and social groups, and to discover spatial and temporal contingencies between visitor behaviors at different locations in the gallery. Results of these descriptive analyses will be used to develop predictive models of visitor behavior, capturing the full gamut of individual styles of visitor interaction with works of art and other visitors, informed by visitors’ sensory operating characteristics as well as sensory and motoric affordances of the gallery space. In the final stage of the project, strategic modifications to gallery design will be used to test and further develop predictive models in forecasting visitor behaviors. Results will constitute a new empirical framework for exhibition design and its impact on visitor experience.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.