Hey Maia,
I haven't found any concrete research on the in-gallery audio preferences by patrons, however I feel the bigger question to ask is the style of the environment around the pieces. Is it meant to be a silent gallery? Is it catered towards children How long are the audio clips/pieces? Expected number of visitors to the exhibition.
For instance, in a children's focused section, having directional speakers with a button to toggle it is quite acceptable and usually in small 30 second or less sound bites, however on my travels to the Patek Phillipe Watch Museum in Geneva, they had an almost silent audio room that had headphones that enabled users to view/listen to audio that went for a few minutes on each piece to learn about the history of the watches.
Not sure if this is at all helpful but I'm always happy to chat if you want to talk over a few audio use cases!
------------------------------
Zachariah Reiner
Product Lead
Cuseum
Boston MA
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 08-27-2015 02:34 PM
From: Maia Werner-Avidon
Subject: Visitor preferences for in-gallery audio
Hi,
Is anyone familiar with research that has been done on visitor preferences for in-gallery audio (that is, whether visitors prefer to engage with audio content via headphones, wands, directional speakers, some other device)?
Thanks for your help,
Maia
______________________________________________
Maia Werner-Avidon
Manager of Research & Evaluation
Asian Art Museum
200 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
415-581-3798
Fax: 415-581-4706