COVES seeks to achieve the following:

1. Establish a sustainable, responsive program to support museums* of all sizes and types across the country to engage collaboratively in ongoing visitor experience studies;
2. Create a coalition of museums focused on understanding and improving the visitor experience;
3. Integrate visitor data collection and analysis across a diverse range of museums in order to build field-wide knowledge and understanding of museum audiences and their experiences;
4. Build the evaluation capacity of museums across the nation; and
5. Increase and enhance the use of visitor data-based decision-making among museum professionals.

* The COVES initiative initially focused on science centers and now seeks to support museums of all types: anthropology, aquaria, art, history museum or historic site, botanical and zoological, science, natural history, children’s, planetarium, visitor center, and beyond.