Lifelong Personalized Museum Experiences

Previous research on the personalized museum experience has largely focused on the single visit. New and emerging mobile technologies are enablers for a longer term view, where the personalization spans multiple visits to museums and links them to other aspects of the user's life. There is a large body of research about the importance of this form of personalization. This paper reviews key literature that informs the directions that seem most promising for “lifelong” personalization of the museum experience, identifies some of the technical challenges for such personalization, in terms of the user modeling, ontologies, infrastructure and generation of personalized content. By taking this approach, technology can play a major role in supporting users in their ongoing museum experience, by modeling the visitors, “remembering” their history and recommending a plan for future visits. We explore the role of client-side personalization that makes use of a mobile phone as a lifelong user model server and a platform for both interacting with a technology rich museum environment and for delivery of personalized information.