Simplifying Digital Exhibitions’ Creation

The creation of a born-digital exhibition accessible to museums and curators with just a few clicks

"More and more museums start to feel the need to digitize exhibitions making art and culture accessible to everyone, everywhere."

Description

Studio for Curatorial Discourse, a team of curators from Berlin, would like to support museums to digitize their exhibitions, giving visitors the opportunity to access them regardless of location and free of opening times.

Challenge

In the current situation (Coronavirus) it is even more important to empathise with the digitalization for location-based solutions. The project focus was to understand user requirements and needs on the museum and visitor sides and design a solution that should offer a digital exhibition

Team

This project was designed by two UX / UI Designers. My teammate, Loïs Warner and I were challenged to apply our skills learned throughout the Ironhack Bootcamp, in collaboration with our client, represented by Steffi Güthling.

Process

During a 2 week design sprint we did daily stand up meetings to provide updates on the project. We also scheduled 6 meetings with our client during the sprint to present the results and collect feedback, saving a lot of time and avoiding frustration, allowing us to communicate effectively.

The steps that we had defined to guide us through our sprint were:

• Problem identification
• User Personas
• Landing ideas
• User Flow
• Wireframes
• UI Prototypes
• Testing and Iterations

Problem Identification Process

We started our discovery process at our Kick off meeting trying to understand from our client what were the real needs behind this project. We also performed a Desktop Research in order to comprehend museums and expositions universe. This initial information gave us the first direction to take

Aiming to comprehend users’ motivations to visit a museum and/or a virtual exhibition we launch a Qualitative Research. 20 users from 12 to 63 years, 19 institutions, 4 curators, 2 museum digitalization companies, 2 museum associations and 2 artists who perform exhibitions were interviewed.

A Qualitative Research was launched with the participation of 150 respondents, including 3 German-speaking countries and 2 differente continents.

Visitor

Results

Most museum visitors look for learning and a guided experience when visiting an exhibition. At the same time entertainment and interactive attractions are much appreciated. Visitors also like to be surprised and have a ‘travel experience’ through an immersive experience.

But how does it work on a virtual experience? We did research on virtual activities that users usually and could offer a similar experience to what they are looking for on a museum visit.

When asked about entertainment options many users answered that they prefer watching or listening to contents than reading them. When searching for knowledge Youtube and Podcasts are the main source used by our respondents. Wikipedia is also mentioned when they are looking for specific content related to art and culture. 75% of respondents have never visited a virtual museum.

Analysing the results of the research we could observe that the current virtual exhibitions experience is disconnected to the preferred channels users look for learning, entertainment and virtual experience. Museums websites were not even mentioned as a source for art and culture research, even being known as a specialised place for this subject.

As many users also mentioned that a virtual contact cannot supply the emotions that seen an masterpiece face-to-face can cause, we understood that a virtual museum experience shouldn’t be seen as a replacement to in person visits, but as an additional resource which offers extra or differentiate content.

Therefore,

“How might we offer access to museum’s content in an engaging way, connecting users to collections with virtual interactions going beyond text reading and pictures?"

Solution

A virtual exhibition accessible on museums’ website or on a dedicated exhibition page offering interactive content, with visual appealing, audio and video tools, guided visit option, summarized and extended content for users who are looking for general or detailed information.

Museum

Results

But are museums prepared to offer this kind of platform?

According to our research there are already some virtual museums exhibition platforms that could be used by museums, such as Google Art And Culture, Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek and Europeana. Some of them are even free and execute the digitalization process for the museums.

With those tools and facilities in mind, why only 2.7% of Germany museums are offering virtual exhibitions?

Lack of technical knowledge: Most museum employees and curators don’t have the necessary knowledge to develop or maintain those kinds of platforms.

Low interaction and customization: The current available tools don’t combine the level of customizations museums are looking for and interaction customers are expecting to see. On Google Arts, despite the good interaction level museums don’t participate in exhibitions creations, which is entirely defined by Google. Museums cannot even add the exhibitions to their website, as it is only available on Google Arts and Culture app and website.

Below you can find the Positioning Map with the comparison of all the analysed platforms.

Long development process: another reason why museums are not offering virtual exhibitions is the long time those projects take to be developed. Some exhibitions have short duration which make unfeasible the creation of a virtual exhibition for them. The deployment of those platforms may also involve third parties which may increase more time to the project delivery

The need of a virtual exhibition has increased on the last weeks due to the current situation the entire world is facing fight against the Coronavirus pandemic. As museums cannot receive visitors they are willing to offer engaging virtual exhibitions as an option to keep visitors interest and museum visibility

We could conclude that there is a market need for a tool which is accessible and easy-to-use for curators and museums’ employees which allow them to create customizable, interactive and digital-born exhibitions, without third parties and with short time timeframes.

“How might we create a virtual exhibition, making born-digital content creation at the reach of any museum and curator?”

Solution

A user friendly and easy to use platform

Achievements

• Broadcasting in Austria & Thüringen (Project included in Museumsbund Österreich Newsletter — 800 members)
• Deutsches Museum as a pilot implementation
• Customers feedbacks

“I can picture the curators having a positive experience with this tool. It is very interesting for us. It could create a bridge between the two worlds in the museum.”

“This Zoom-in feature is very helpful, I needed this already in former exhibitions and it was complicated.”