Analyzing museum exhibition spaces via visitor movement and exploration: The case of Whitworth Art Gallery of Manchester

Abstract

To analyse the movement and exploration of visitors on museum exhibition spaces, agent based models that simulate their behaviour can be a useful tool. Such a model is proposed here, to which we use appropriate defined dynamical and social forces to describe their motions, while the resulting decision making procedure either preserves or creates groups of individuals. That proves to give realistic visitor motions to complex and multi level spaces while resulting the way they bypass obstacles, move to stairs or follow other groups on their way out. Simulation results are then used to analyse the exhibition spaces of the Whitworth Art Gallery throughout the motion flow of the visitors.