This study examined which accompanying information elements were noticed by visitors while they were looking at artworks, using eye-tracking experiments. First, we conducted an online survey to grasp the types of information that visitors wanted to know, and five elements were obtained. Second, we collected information on these five elements through interviews with one artist. Third, eye-tracking experiments were performed with semi-structured interviews. We set the information delivery media as follows: wall and mobile texts as commonly used in art museums. The results showed that patterns of eye movement of visitors were different according to the information delivery media. Also, we found that there was a correlation between the results of the eye-tracking experiment and visitor interest. This study has limitations in that it is an experiment limited to small sample size and artwork genre; however, it is meaningful in that it was able to grasp the information needs of visitors through eye-tracking.

Visitor-centered approaches have been widely discussed in the museum experience research field. One notable approach was suggested by Falk and Dierking, who defined museum visitor experience as having a physical, personal, and social context. Many studies have been conducted based on this approach, yet the interactions between personal and social contexts have not been fully researched. Since previous studies related to these interactions have focused on the face-to-face conversation of visitor groups, attempts to provide the social information contributed by visitors have not progressed. To fill this gap, we examined such interactions in collaboration with the Lee-Ungno Art Museum in South Korea. Specifically, we investigated the influence of individual visitors’ social contextual information about their art museum experience. This data, which we call “visitor-based social contextual information” (VSCI), is the social information individuals provide—feedback, reactions, or behavioral data—that can be applied to facilitate interactions in a social context. The study included three stages: In Stage 1, we conducted an online survey for a preliminary investigation of visitors’ requirements for VSCI. In Stage 2, we designed a mobile application prototype. Finally, in Stage 3, we used the prototype in an experiment to investigate the influence of VSCI on museum experience based on visitors’ behaviors and reactions. Our results indicate that VSCI positively impacts visitors’ museum experiences. Using VSCI enables visitors to compare their thoughts with others and gain insights about art appreciation, thus allowing them to experience the exhibition from new perspectives. The results of this novel examination of a VSCI application suggest that it may be used to guide strategies for enhancing the experience of museum visitors.

As social networking services (SNSs) have become increasingly influential, they are now a vital element in art museums because communication with visitors is crucial. However, conventional methods of visitor studies do not consider the characteristics of SNSs. Even when a museum uses a SNS as a marketing tool, it cannot sufficiently analyze the data to understand the visitor. Additionally, linking the SNS analysis content with the actual visitor in the museum requires an application to identify visitor types. Therefore, we extracted communities through a social network analysis of museum followers, analyzed the characteristics for specific groups, and designed a web-based, visitor-type analysis application for art museums based on text-similarity measurements. The experimental results demonstrated that followers of each art museum on a SNS form a community with similar characteristics or interests. Furthermore, our developed application provides a new way to analyze the type of visitors in an art museum. Consequently, because it can automatically identify visitor types, it improves the exhibition experience of visitors by linking them with the exhibition contents or guide services and is a new attempt to connect a SNS with the museum visitor.