National Museum Zurich, 21st Century Swiss History Exhibition
Zurich, Switzerland
2022
As part of its permanent exhibition on Swiss history, the National Museum Zurich sought to know its visitors experience of and opinion on the 21st Century Swiss History Room. The Museum’s objective was to know how the public felt about the Room from the perspective of the visitors’ flow as well as the way the different themes are presented. Placed at the end of the visiting journey, but due to the Museum’s configuration, the 21st Century Room can also be visited first by visitors who choose to take a different route. Additionally, due to its’ subject matter, the room consists of distinctive design and high level of interactivity.
In collaboration with the muse team, the National Museum Zurich developed a series of questions to understand if and how the visiting sequence of the Room had an impact on visitors’ perception, and how relevant and successful the themes exhibited felt to them. The muse survey included 18 questions, ran for 7 months and collected over 1200 responses from 100 different countries. It was found that more than half the respondents visited the room last and most visitors expressed positive feelings about the 21st Century Room with many of them noting that the room stands out from the rest of the exhibition tour.
The 21st Century Room deals with topical issues of this century, including climate change, migration, life expectancy and robotics. The muse survey helped enquire about visitors’ interest in the exhibit’s content, and revealed that “Climate change” was the main topic of interest, notably among the generation of under 25 years old. This does not insinuate that the Room was more relevant to generations who were born or grew up in the 21st century, but perhaps reflects the main concerns they hold for their future that will undeniably follow the course of this century. In fact, when asked about future topics they would like to see next, the majority of visitors chose “Environment and climate” and “Artificial intelligence”, regardless of age. This is a good indicator that all visitors felt concerned about the overall theme of this Room and its relevance with the rest of the Museum.
The survey also asked the participants about what they interacted the most with. As true 21st-century visitors, the majority of them said they enjoyed playing the quizzes and watching the different videos. It is to be noted that the largest age group represented throughout the survey was the under 18 years old. This would explain the great popularity for multimedia displays and interactive forms of engagement. Regarding their preferred methods of learning about Swiss history, the majority of visitors again expressed that they mainly enjoyed learning through games and narrative contents, such as films and personal stories. At a time when we are very much surrounded by moving images and flash information, the interactivity and the displays of the 21st Century Room accurately reflected the contemporary world we live in. The survey results confirmed to the curators that the topics in the exhibition are relevant and that multimedia displays and interactivity are the best mediation approaches for these contents.
The muse survey has allowed the National Museum Zurich to identify its core audience and measure the degree of success of the 21st Century Room based on the participants’ experience of it. The majority of visitors entered the room at the end of their visit, as they ideally should according to a chronological logic. Their overall satisfaction of the themes and the interactive methods of learning lead to believe that the 21st Century Room felt relevant to the public and measured up to this century’s way of life. For the curators, “the survey results reassured us that the room works and gave us very useful hints on new topics that could be added in the future”. Therefore, the National Museum Zurich will be able to update the contents and displays of the Room in adequacy with its visitors’ evolving expectations and desires for future topics.