Contextual Inquiry #1

Our first contextual inquiry was Arthur, a psych major and math enthusiast. The contextual inquiry took place at the Jacob’s Pillow exhibit in WCMA on a Monday afternoon. After we introduced ourselves, we briefly explained that we were hoping to observe how people who are not art aficionados interact with art in museums such as WCMA. We told Arthur that we wanted him to walk around the museum the same way he would if we were not around, with the exception of narrating his thoughts to us as he walked through the exhibits.

One thing that we broadly observed was that Arthur spent much of the time wandering around the exhibit without stopping for more than a few seconds at most of the pieces. For the first few minutes, he did not seem to show much of a response to anything. The first significant reaction he had was to a mask. He told us that it reminded him of artworks his grandparents used to have in their house. He then grew increasingly animated and began to speak louder as he described his grandparents’ art collection. This personal connection to the art seemed to excite him. The next piece that caught his attention was a large tapestry, which he stopped to observe for a few minutes. We asked him why this tapestry had caught his attention. He initially said he was not sure why he was drawn to it. A few minutes later, however, he told us that he really likes looking at patterned tiles or squares on the ground and that the tapestry reminded him of those tiles. Again, this personal connection or association seemed to be how he connected to artwork.

Arthur showed constant self-awareness that he was not an expert on art. At one point in passing he described himself as an “uncultured swine”. When we asked why he called himself an “uncultured swine” he responded, “people go to an art museum and find meaningful connections with art but I don’t find that”. We followed up by asking if being surrounded by more people who also don’t have meaningful connections with art would improve his experience, to which his response was that he wouldn’t want a “museum for goofballs who don’t really care”. Interestingly, he held the opinion that museums were spaces for people who appreciated and understood art and he seemed to be content to not be a part of that space.

We did discover that when Noah provided some comments of his own about the art or started some joking banter about the art, Arthur was happy to respond with his own funny comments. This banter seemed to be an effective way of getting Arthur more interested in talking about the art. One difficulty we faced was trying to gauge whether Arthur would have responded differently to the art if he was surrounded by other people who viewed art the same way as him. Having Noah engage with Arthur about the art and provide some joking observations of his own was one attempt at gauging this.

Overall Arthur’s interaction with the museum space was mostly what we expected. Moving forward, we would like to attempt different research methods such as Graffiti Walls or Picture Cards which we believe will be more effective in determining what people’s natural or instinctive responses to art are and how they connect with art. It was helpful to learn that Arthur found connections with art that he could relate to a personal story; it would be interesting to see if this holds true for other people as well. If we do end up doing another contextual inquiry, it would be useful to observe a group of people instead of a single person, to see how they interact with each other and with the art.