Designing Layouts for Sequential Experiences: Application to Cultural Institutions

Information Systems and Operations Management

Speaker: Abhishek Deshmane (IESE)

Room Bernard Ramanantsoa

Abstract:

Experience providers - ranging from retail platforms to cultural institutions - need to decide on how to display an assortment of items for physical and digital interactions. In this paper, we develop a data-driven analytics framework to optimize these layout-related decisions for maximum user engagement. We develop a new dynamic choice model, called Pathway MNL, that represents visitor activity as a sequence of conditional logit experiments. Through an ongoing collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum, we validate the model on large-scale logs of visitor activity recorded through audio guides. We uncover significant relationships between visitors' choices and layout-related factors, among others. Finally, we analyze the resulting mathematical program for layout optimization and identify simple layout interventions that can significantly lift visitor engagement.

Co-authors: Ali Aouad and Victor Martínez de Albéniz