Museum Techmuse

Boston Stories meeting

Just got out of the Boston Stories luncheon meeting -- culmination of years of work by Mike Spock and team distilling the essence of how they managed to change the nature of museum exhibits in the 1960s and beyond at Boston's Children's Museum.

I was fortunate to tap into this work while I was Technology Developer at the Museum from 1988 to 1998. Great to reconnect with friends and colleagues whose work has deeply changed the experience of visitors.

The project site is at: http://bcmstories.com. Special thanks to Nina Simon and Gabriella Marks for taking the site to the next level. And it's still evolving. To my friends in the museum community: how might this site be made even more relevant to you? What features would you like to see?

New iPhone 3GS

I couldn't resist, and got my new iPhone 3GS on the first day available, a few hours ago.  Drove in to the Apple Store -- it was busy but not crazy. Because I had pre-ordered mine, they had me stand in a special roped-off line. (But, in fact, I was the only person in that line and felt a bit foolish as other people were walking around freely).

It feels a lot like my old (original) iPhone.  In fact, I might have been a bit disappointed except for a few showy new apps that made me realize this is a new phone altogether.  The compass is beautifully designed and makes me want to go look for buried treasure. And the Voice Recorder brings up a classic microphone and VU meter, although I can't get the meter to move as dramatically as I'd like.

But the really big feature I think is the ability to encode photos and video with GPS location data, something with huge potential for museums. Plus the ability to easily, seamlessly upload video to YouTube. I'll be exploring these in more detail...

AAM and ACM: A view from the exhibit hall

Just wrapping a week in Philly for the AAM and ACM conferences, and though the numbers were smaller -- AAM reportedly had about half the usual attendees this year because of financial conditions in museums -- the conversations were good. Definitely worthwhile.

Several exhibitors reported that they were as busy as ever on projects, an assessment I concur with.  But maybe there's a dynamic here -- that we may be riding a wave of funding committed before the crash, and that it will catch up with us in the next 6 months.  Museums may lag behind the economy, offset a bit by funding cycles.  Hard to say.

Still musing...

Things have been pretty busy the last several months with installations at Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, ECHO Lake Science Center, Levine Museum of the New South, Illinois Holocaust Museum, and others in the works. A blessing in this economy. But I've let a lot of thoughts slip by that I wanted to share. Here are a few thoughts -- more detail sometime soon:

• Post visit audience: it may be more effective to design for specific groups (after school groups, moms clubs, etc) than generalized visitors. Need to tap into pre-motivated learners.
• What's after Web 2.0?  Now that social media has arrived, what's next?  We need to provide visitors a big picture mission (solving some local community issue) that raises the level of communication.
• iPhone: the power of place.  If we're looking to change visitor behavior, we need to be in the right place at the right time. iPhone apps have potential to do that.
• YouTube stories: the emerging trend of including visitor voices on museum YouTube channels

Text messaging for museums: lessons from Obama

I've long been interested in how museums can use technology to encourage new behaviors among visitors after their visit. One of the remarkable things from this past election here in the U.S. is the way the Obama team used text messaging (and other technologies) to motivate supporters with the right message at the right time. Here are a few principles that can be translated to museum projects:

• Heighten interest (and opt-in participation) by releasing specific intriguing information first via text messaging. (Say, for example, a VP pick, or the answer to a mystery posed in an exhibit).
• Scaffold resources into the message: a phone number or URL to get more info about a program the visitor has already expressed interest in.
• Be clear about the specific action step the visitor should take: vote, or attend tomorrows' harvest festival with a friend.
• Provide the message at just the right time: the day before elections, or two days before festival registration deadlines.
• Be judicious about the number of messages sent: just when they are needed, no more, no less...

NPR Series: Museums and the 21st Century

NPR is doing a series over the next month or so on museums in the 21st century. I had the pleasure of participating yesterday in an interview that will probably air sometime around Dec 22nd. The focus was on childrens' museums and technology, and we talked about topics like parent/child interaction with technologies (what role do parents have in an interactive?), and the special focus on visitors that childrens museums have. This focus on visitor experience is something that shapes everything childrens' musems do, including the use of interactive technologies.

The first part of the series aired a few days ago, you can find it here (thanks to Jenifer Trant for scouting this out).

Children's Museums and Technology talking points

Going in to NPR tomorrow to talk about children's museums and technology. Here are some of the things I'm thinking about:

1. Children’s museums are visitor-centered. This is the starting point for design. Not collections, but who is walking in the door, and what are their needs. “How can we help our visitors?” – a simple question that is powerful when you look at it more closely.
2. Children’s museums in general are wary of technology. Kids have fewer options for physical experiences, and technology is seen a potential diversion from physical experience. (On the flip side, technologies for communication and personal expression are valued).
3. “Interactivity” is most often between people rather than with a particular exhibit or technology. The museum experience is a social experience.
4. An emerging trend: using technology to encourage real-world activity. (includes websites such as Good to Grow and others with specific resources for local activity).
5. Another trend: using technology to value visitors’ own experience. Ask them to share their experience with other visitors.

 

ACM session: Web 2.0 Parent Connections

Attended a very interesting session at the Association of Children's Museums conference in Denver...Rick Winefield, Exec. Director at the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito and Tim Olson, who heads the interactive technology team at PBS station KQED in San Francisco, gave an overview of technologies they believe museums can be exploring to more effectively connect with their audiences.

Some of these technology tools included:

• Yelp (see how your museum is reviewed locally)
• Youtube Nonprofit Channel (walking tour of your exhibits, etc)
• Blogs (behind the scenes info about museum)
• Eventful/Upcoming/Helios and other calendar and event sites
• Discussions (Yahoo Groups, Public Action, etc)
• Flickr (embed a "badge" of latest photos of museum on your site)

I also thought it was interesting that the title of the session focused on parents (rather than kids) as the audience. This reinforces a point I made in my recent article for Hand to Hand that we should think of our primary children's museum Web audience as parents, who can be active participants in a Web 2.0 environment...

AAM session: museum video onscreen at ATM machines

I was struck during today's presentation on "The Current State of Exhibit Media" at the AAM conference by some stunning videos from that National Palace Museum in Taiwan. Here are a couple samples below (I heard a translated version, and I think the first had to do with Buddhist text in the calligraphy as interpreted by a video artist. The second includes 3D characters that come to life from exhibits.)

These are high-end productions that would be difficult/expensive for most museums to produce. But what struck me most is that the museum is looking for wide ways of distributing the videos, from display in bus stations, on subway cars, and on ATM machines. (Yes, ATM machines -- they made arrangements with a local bank to display short excerpts as people get cash...).

Very smart -- distributing content beyond the usual screens in exhibits and on the Web. It's one of the major considerations: how else can we connect with visitors in their daily lives?

MW2008: Notable sessions on community

It's been a couple weeks since the Museums and the Web 2008 conference now. Here are two sessions that I'm still thinking about: Peter Samis' presentation of their findings at SFMOMA of visitor text comments posted from the exhibit to a blog, and Gail Durbin's session about their experiences with Web 2.0 projects at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The two compliment each other well: raising questions about visitor voices in exhibits, and providing some potential answers.

Peter's presentation raises questions about the visitor voice based on experiences in their fascinating exhibit of Olafur Eliasson's work. Visitors could type in comments on the works while in the museum. The comments included reflection on visitors' experience, but were characterized generally as a "mixed bag" of responses (ie, "cooooooollllllll!!!!!!!!!!!"). An issue: how much weight do we give to visitors' comments, many of which did not involve much consideration?

The project that caught my attention in Gail Durbin's presentation focused on the V&A's World Beach Project which allows users to submit photos of installations of stone they create on beaches. The project provides an extraordinary structure allowing visitors to collaborate with the museum in parallel to an exhibit.

A thought: visitors don't have much time to create media while in the museum, and we need to ratchet up the filtering process to get at the gold (which _will_ be there), or scaffold more tools to support visitors' expressions. But post-visit creative opportunities (such as the World Beach Project) offer even more options for significant visitor involvement.