What’s IPOP?

Maybe you’ve heard someone in a museum exhibition meeting say something like, "Let's run this through IPOP." (Especially if that someone came from a Smithsonian museum or affiliate.)

But what’s IPOP?

IPOP is a visitor-engagement theory developed at the Smithsonian in the early 2000s by researchers studying visitor experience. The letters group visitors by the experience each type prefers:

(I)deas – prefer concepts and information
(P)eople – prefer stories, emotions, and relationships
(O)bjects – prefer authentic things and collections
(P)hysical – prefer sensory, immersive, and hands-on experiences

The model is useful because it offers us a way to think about designing exhibitions with multiple points of entry. If you design each exhibition for each preference, you have something for everyone. Or at least a start.

Caution: the model has not come into wide use. In my practice, we only encounter it on certain Smithsonian-related projects. And some argue that real visitors rarely fit neatly into just these four categories — or that they often fit into more than one.

Here's the thing:

It’s good to have a framework that helps our exhibitions work for a wider range of visitors. IPOP might not be perfect, but it’s waaay better than no framework at all.

Warmly,
Jonathan

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MtM Word of the Day:
IPOP. A museum visitor-engagement theory developed by researchers at the Smithsonian in the early 2000s. It proposes that people connect with exhibitions through four primary preferred entry points: Ideas, People, Objects, and Physical experiences. IPOP is used mainly as a planning and discussion tool.