Summary: We should pay close attention to mental map matching. Museum visitors have their own sense of geography and marked by their own lived experiences. What feels like an important city landmark to one person isn’t even on the radar for another. To account for this, museums should approach maps in the same way that an online mapping service does: by making rules about what categories of landmarks appear at different zoom levels, and then letting the software take over. With the help of digital tools, we can work toward a map that draws on a hierarchy of categories instead of our personal experience.
