The use of time as a measure of visitor behavior and exhibit effectiveness.

Parking meters, appointments, bus schedules and lunch hours; hunger, mental fatigue, and physical exhaustion--the duration of a museum visit is related to a variety of factors that we all realize, but often seem to forget. The time a visitor spends is more than seconds, minutes, and hours; it is a measure of constraints, needs, and values. THe allocation of this valuable commodity is a useful barometer to the visitor's underlying interests, motivations, satisfactions, and dislikes. Time is perhaps not coincidentally, the single most frequently used for evaluating exhibit(s) quality/effectiveness and assessing visitor behavior--the time spent in an exhibit, the time spent in an exhibition hall, the time spent in a museum. Time, as a research variable, is easy to measure, essentially objective, and theoretically non-trivial. In this paper, [the author] will: 1) review the previous uses of time as a museum evaluation parameter and suggest some new perspectives on using time as measure in evaluation studies; and 2) look at a time metaphorically as a devise for understanding museum visitor behavior.

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