Visitor Attention and Communication in Information-Based Exhibitions

Soyeon Kim, Hyunju Lee

As the role and domain of exhibitions have expanded, the exhibition has been used as a communication medium in increasingly diverse areas. In particular, the rapid increase in information-based exhibitions has been followed by an expansion of the role of exhibition text as well as the emergence of various typographical presentation methods for more effective communication. Therefore, this research was conducted to study the attention and communication characteristics of exhibition visitors, focusing on the presentation method of using an entire architectural surface, such as the floor, wall, or ceiling of an exhibition hall, as the presentation interface. In addition, in-depth interviews were used after comparative experiments with the panel display, the most popular conventional method used in exhibitions. The test results showed a significant positive correlation between visitor attention and communication. Compared with the panel display, the typographical presentation method utilizing the architectural surface as interface (ASI) was found to increase visitor attention by stimulating more of the visitor’s interest and by transforming each exhibition element into a visual reference through variations in the position and scale of typography. Most of all, when compared with the panel display, the ASI display was found to be more effective in communicating with casual visitors who are skimming through the exhibition.