Tracking-based museum visitor research

At the Deutsches Museum in Nuremberg - the "Future Museum" - possible visions of the future are to be made tangible and tangible for visitors - and as close up as possible. This also applies to more sinister visions of the future with far-reaching surveillance as we know it from George Orwell's 1984: Those who like - participation is voluntary - can in the future have themselves electronically tracked on all paths in the house. At the end, participants will receive a personal profile with an evaluation of what they have revealed about themselves in the course of the visit, what their preferences and interests appear to be. This makes it possible to experience what is already partly a reality elsewhere in the world, for example in China. There will also be regular discussions about this in the Future Museum forum. The anonymous profiles of the participating visitors also provide important information for the exhibition organizers about which topics are generally of interest to visitors and which texts and films are exciting and understandable. This visitor research will then in turn flow into future, even better exhibitions.

On the one hand, the FAU team will develop a camera system that anonymously records visitor numbers and streams, as well as personal data about those people who have consented to the temporary use of their data. On the other hand, the researchers are working on algorithms for data evaluation and interpretation that can be used to create a comprehensive user profile - from walking routes through the exhibition to measuring emotions and group dynamics.