We took this photo a few days ago. We were heading to the National Gallery in London to research on Leonardo da Vinci for an educational project we are working on and we found ourselves in the middle of a big Extinction Rebellion protest against climate change, right in front of the museum. The contrast between the two situations could not have been starker. In the square, thousands of people were creating the most impressive and extensive act of civil disobedience we’ve ever seen. The atmosphere was surcharged with playful creativity, gentle determination and a real sense of emergency.

…

Having been part of the early museums and the web scene (we started around 1995) we at InvisibleStudio had the curiosity of retrace some of the early dates of museum websites. Unfortunately it’s quite difficult to reconstruct with precision those early years — the only source usually is the meritorious Internet Archive, which saves websites year after year, but there is no way to be sure that the first archived version is really the first website or the first date of publication.

So we headed for a different source: the domain name registration date, which gives us a more precise…

“ The elephant in the room is that: the vast majority of our visitors do not use technology during their museum visit”. Peter Samis of SFMOMA said this during a presentation on multimedia guides in 2008 https://www.slideshare.net/psamis/the-eyes-want-to-have-it-multimedia-handhelds-in-the-museum-an-evolving-story-presentatio n slide 65). He was right: after more than 10 years, only a tiny percentage of users choose to pay a fee, no matter how small, to get a multimedia device from the museum (British Museum put this figure at around 3%). Even when audio guides are provided for free, many visitors either choose not to use them or abandon them halfway through…

Why CX is Crucial for Museums

Posted on February 20, 2019 in Blog

No, we are not talking about the iconic Citroen CX, but it was a lovely car, so we couldn’t help paying a little homage to it.

In the last decade, people dealing with digital products had to become familiar with two letters: UX (User Experience).

Ease of use and an overall attention to the user needs and how they are met by the product or service make or break the success of the product.

The first iPhone is a classical example: not the first or more powerful…

Digital Text Version:

WHY DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IN MUSEUMS SHOULD BE “RETRO”
Sometimes in museums you can feel a certain pressure to apply the latest, most up-to-date digital technologies.
There’s nothing wrong in considering museums a suitable place to test new, cutting edge technologies, but when it comes down to digital products intended for the general public we think five features should be kept in mind.

Digital products should be:

RELIABLE -They should not break down
EASY TO USE — Visitors should understand immediately how to use them THOUGHT-PROVOKING — too often digital is seen only as “fun” or “wow”
REPAIRABLE…

At the recent Culture Geek Conference in London one of the most interesting talks was not about a fancy new technology, but about an old, intractable problem: how can you safely update an existing, complex digital system?

The Digital Team at the V&A faced this problem when they decided to change the interface of the event online sales system. They wanted to make it more streamlined and mobile-friendly. It seemed like an easy, two-month project, but it morphed into a one-year long mammoth task.

How could this happen? Because as soon as they delved into the content management system, they…

Trani is a beautiful small town in Southern Italy well-known for its wonderful cathedral next to the seaside. Thousands of tourists a day flock to this romanesque jewel, but few notice the small museum right on the cathedral square.