Fun, Happiness, and Play

Fun, as we shared last week, can be a loaded word when it comes to museums.  While many museum-going parents and younger adults think about museums as “fun” experiences, a good segment of older adults are less comfortable with the idea that museums can be “fun.”

Our post elicited some interesting comments (with those commenting pretty firmly in the “fun” camp, understanding that “fun” and education/learning are not mutually exclusive concepts).  The comments raised some good points including:

• “Fun” may be a word younger museum-goers use to describe museums, but it is not necessarily a word the general public might choose.  We simply don’t have enough data on the public’s perceptions of “fun” and museums to draw strong conclusions at this point.
• Additionally, “fun” is one of many motivations for visiting museums.  For some people, “fun” is the primary motivation.  For others, “fun” is a secondary motivation.  And for some, “fun” is not a motivation at all (though that does not mean they do not enjoy museums). 
• And then there was the idea that the word “fun” might translate to mean “play” for some visitors.  That is, for older adults who would not use the word “fun,” it may be because they don’t care for the idea of museums as playgrounds.  Whereas parents do, indeed, often comment about museums being playgrounds for their young children.  For young adults, “fun” museums may be places to play with ideas, concepts, art, science, etc.

We wanted to consider the third bullet, which originates out of Colleen Dilenschneider’s comment, more carefully, so we took a quick look at some of our data from last winter’s study of 40,000+ museum goers. 

In that study, respondents were asked why they visited museums, and were asked to choose one of the following:

• Curiosity
• Family time
• Fun
• Learning opportunities for children
• Only visit on vacation/for something specific
• Other

Each choice then went to a follow-up question asking why curiosity/family time/fun/learning were important to them, why they only visited infrequently, etc.  We then examined these open-ended responses to look for the word “play.”

Turns out, Colleen is, indeed, on to something.  Respondents who selected “fun” were significantly more likely to use the word “play” in their responses, being twice as likely to use “play” than the family time or learning respondents, and over 22 times (yes, 22) more likely to use the word “play” than curious respondents (keep in mind that most older respondents to the survey chose “curiosity,” so this makes sense).

OK – all fair enough.  But I want to add on another layer, inspired by a recent article in Fast Company on Stanford marketing professor Jennifer Aaker, who teaches a class on “Designing Happiness.” In her work, she has found that the concept of “happiness” shifts as people age.  Young people are happier when they are excited (think kids and dinosaurs!), while older people are more likely to link happiness with peacefulness.

Cue the light bulbs going off in my head like crazy.  Her findings mirror ours around the word fun.  If excitement = happiness, then it isn’t a huge leap to conjecture the following:

• For younger respondents, play = excitement = happiness = fun
• For older respondents, play = excitement = fun ≠ peacefulness, ergo play & fun ≠ happiness

Since a segment of museum-going older adults go to museums to relax and escape their everyday lives by seeing beautiful things and stoking their personal curiosity and interests, “fun” may, indeed, imply to them a noisy, boisterous environment that is anything but relaxing.  Their reactions to the word “fun” to describe museums (or simply their not thinking of using it at all), now makes more sense. 

Does this mean you should avoid the word “fun” when working to attract and engage more visitors to your museum?  Not at all, so long as you understand that the word has many meanings to different segments of museum-goers (as well as non-museum-goers).

What do you think?  Does fun = play?  Can museums be playful, for adults of all ages?  What about adults who are happiest when in more relaxing (i.e., quieter) environments? We'd love to hear what you think.  To share, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Comments

[Colleendilen]

Wow! I'm glad that my comment was useful and could be used to spawn some of the great ideas posed here! Thanks for sharing this information on the relationship between play and fun.

The Fast Company article also says that a meaningful experience (like learning a new skill or volunteering) helps create happiness. Perhaps, then, the ideal museum should aim to engage both old and young by incorporating exhibits involving play AND sharing uncommon ideas that might create that happiness associated with learning new skill or idea. (Is it too big a leap to think that the happiness associated with learning a new skill may also take place when one learns an interesting new fact?) If peacefulness relates to lack-of-stimulation, then museums wouldn't be fun at all for older folks- but I don't think that's the case. I wonder if when you are young, fun is what stimulates your body (physical play), and maybe when you get older, fun is what stimulates your mind? Hmmm... Thanks for the thought-fuel!

[Stephanie Seacord]

This conversation is terrific and has such thought-provoking ripples! To add to the mix: a destination marketing colleague I work with (Kathleen Soldati at The Music Hall in Portsmouth NH) frequently reminds us to: market the anticipation, market the experience, market the memory. Anticipate, enjoy, remember. Young or old. And I think that's why (to go back to where I started reading this blog) we all remember the dinosaurs in the museums we visited as kids.

[Linda Wilson]

Great thread!
I'm curious about the list of why they visited in yourt survey. You gave them these choices (and they could choose only one)
 Curiosity
 Family time
 Fun
 Learning opportunities for children
 Only visit on vacation/for something specific
 Other
What's behind your choice of these particular categories? And what showed up in the "Other" bin?

[James Chung, Reach Advisors]

Stephanie,
A quick (but way off-topic) comment about your takeaway from your colleague in the destination marketing business: I can't emphasize enough how important it is for museums to know their destination marketing counterparts for a few reasons:

1) There's fertile ground for cross-pollination between museums and destination marketing organizations. Sometimes it's because there's a shared audience base, creating the potential for meaningful marketing partnerships. Sometimes it's because there's simply more focus and budget on marketing destinations than there is for many museums, which perhaps creates an opportunity to learn from the shortfalls and successes of those other efforts.

2) We see repeatedly in our work for museums, municipalities as well as destination marketing organizations that museums often get the short end of the stick when municipal/regional marketing dollars and resources open up for tourism development...even though museums are often an important piece of the local tourism brand! Worth knowing those colleagues who can make sure museums have a seat at the table when these kinds of opportunities open up!

And what might that local tourism brand involve? For some tourism brands, perhaps it might being a uniquely fun place for families or for young adults. Or for other local tourism brands, it might be a rather different brand of 'fun' for older adults...or passion...or curiosity...or rest and relaxation. (Many tourism development organizations expend a ton of effort to nail this point...and feel free to let us know if you want to swap notes on how those processes sometimes come together).

But whatever might be the local tourism brand message, museums are often a key piece that supports that local tourism brand message, and it would be a shame not to be part of that! So stay close to your buddies in that world (and have fun in the process)!

[Susie Wilkening, Reach Advisors]

Good question, Linda. Over the course of a number of studies, we refined these categories as best capturing the primary motivations for visiting for certain segments of visitors, namely parents of minor children.

This question was therefore primarily designed for segmenting parents, and we expected most respondents who did not have minor children in the home to choose curiosity, be less frequent, or select "other." And, indeed, that is generally what happened, with the exception of the "fun" response, which resonated with many adults under 50 without children.

The "other" bin collected a few thousand responses, but they mostly reiterated the choices above, or people said they couldn't choose just one. There were a few individuals who were very interested in the specific subject matter at a certain of museum (railroad enthusiast, for example). But nothing leaped out as another strong category.

That being said, we are testing a new segmentation scheme focusing on adults visiting museums without children. We're in early stages yet, so no concrete findings . . . yet!

[Major Fun]

As an older person, I find that I can derive a lot of happiness from just watching kids having fun. Especially if I am sitting down. Which leads me to this recommendation: all museums should include as part of their permanent collection a plethora of rocking chairs and other such, scattered wherever there are exhibits to contemplate and kids to watch (from a safely non-committal distance). They can be simple rocking chairs, wood, plastic, they can be elaborate rocking chairs, they can be rocking benches and perhaps some rocking horses for the active sitter.

As for kids and fun, that, in my experience, is what childhood is for. Fun is pretty much their standard unit of measurement. Fun means active involvement. Engagement. And there are lots, and lots of ways for kids to have fun, find fun. Eating, of course. Watching fun stuff happen. Playing, though, is best. Playing with stuff. Playing with each other. Playing even with us old folks on or off our rockers.