Rachel Lewis from the Brooklyn Museum on stage at the Boye 19 Brooklyn conference
Driving engagement and improving the experience has been key drivers for many big projects in the last years. Delivering a bad experience kills any hard-earned loyalty.
Technology is a part of the equation, but beyond creating a better and more compelling website, what might we do to go above and beyond expectations?
Rachel Lewis works at the Brooklyn Museum as the Assistant Manager of Visitor Engagement. She is especially interested in the potential of digital technology to drive engagement and improve experience in museum environments.
In our recent member conference call, we heard about her project using augmented reality in a museum gallery context. As usual, we also explored how AR and emerging tech might be used in other sectors as well.
Specific to the museum world, Rachel spoke about the fact that the way ancient objects are are displayed in art museums doesn't always capture how they looked and functioned in their original contexts. Augmented reality could be used to address the infamous mythical whiteness in classical sculpture.
Beyond the museum world, there was a few notable takeaways for all:
Free online tools sometimes stop being free. This is a point CWI researcher and Web luminary Steven Pemberton calls one of the dangers of Web 2.0. See his slide from 2016: And what if it dies? Or your account is deleted?
Requiring visitors to install an app on their own device is a big barrier. A solution to this could be to use texting or provide iPads or similar with the app installed for guests to use. Rachel elaborated on the texting option via a tweet. To quote: “To chat with the art historian team, users can either download the app or SMS text the team directly”
In a bigger picture, it’s also about how we embrace generation Z.
Take a look at the Colorizing Sculpture slides or watch the entire 24-minute recording below.