Gamification practices in museums

In the past museums were visited only by a minority of educated, elite people. Today museums as cultural institutions serve to large number of audiences. Yet, the competition from other alternative leisure time activities makes it increasingly harder for museums to attract visitors. Advancement in technology during the twenty first century resulted new ideas and practices in museums in order to inform their visitors about their collections. The development of new methods will help museums to communicate effectively with their visitors and also to attract new audiences. "Gamification" is an effective method for museums to interact with their visitors. However, gamification as an academic terminology is developed only in recent years. The concept of gamification has been used by companies as a marketing strategy to promote their products. Gamification is also implemented successfully in such areas, as education, health, self-improvement among others. Gamification can be utilized in various domains to motivate and attract people's attention. Despite, there are some studies on utilization of gamification in marketing, business and communication; studies on gamification of museum experiences are scant. The purpose of this study is to close this gap and identify possible gamification methods in museums. The benefits of gamification in museums and their impact on visitor experience are also explored. In order to reach the objectives of the thesis, eight museum professionals were interviewed to identify gamification practices, benefits and challenges of gamification in museums. The semi-structured interviews were transcribed and content analyzed based on an open coding procedure. The text was color coded and emerging themes for each research question were grouped under different categories to understand gamification processes and challenges. The study has shown that gamification practices facilitate to create a meaningful interaction in museums for visitors. Key Words: Museum, Gamification, Motivation, Visitor Experience, Museum-Visitor Interaction