Creating a Community Driven VR Experience

In my last story I introduced the idea of what the Barnes is doing with VR and why we’re doing. In this post you’ll find me detailing how we put the project together.

Neighborhood Library Selection

We used the first two months as a planning period to determine which neighborhood libraries would be the best fit for the program. This included reviewing library locations, visiting potential sites, and meeting with librarians to discuss the program to see if they thought this would be of interest for their community.

Selection of neighborhood library locations was guided by the following questions:

• In which neighborhoods does the Barnes already have strong community engagement? We wanted to think about those areas of the city where we have partnerships in place — with organizations like Puentes de Salud, Indego Bike Share, and People’s Emergency Center. Also, we were considering libraries in neighborhoods near public schools where we already have established programs. In this way, the project could help grow our footprint, while also being supported by communities who may have some awareness of the Barnes.
• Which neighborhood libraries are near SEPTA public transportation with easy access to the Barnes? Because we’d be using public transit on the Barnes field trips, we needed locations that had easy access to transportation with as few transfers as possible. We also needed stops/transfers with as little walking as possible knowing those we engage could have varying degrees of mobility.
• Which neighborhood libraries already have strong constituencies in their own right? We would work directly with the Free Library to identify neighborhood libraries that have a capable supervisor, an engaged patron base, and some history of cultural enrichment programs for adults.

Four libraries were selected: Central, Durham (West Philly), South Philly, and Lillian Marrero (North Philly). Additionally, we engaged the Athletic Recreation Center (North Philly) and we used this as an A/B test to see if audiences in the recreation centers were as engaged in the program as those in neighborhood libraries.

Training

As we were selecting libraries, we also spent a great deal of our planning period bringing many members of our staff together for diversity and inclusion training. RaceForward was commissioned to run a single-day workshop providing an introduction to the role, responsibility and opportunity for the Barnes to advance racial equity. This was attended by teams across the institution — education, marketing, communications, design, visitor services, security, community engagement — helping us bring a variety of voices and experiences to the table.

Staff members from all across the organization were brought together for the RaceForward training helping give us many different perspectives.

We also commissioned Nicole Caruth to work with our education teams to create a set of teaching tenets to be used throughout the project. In addition to developing a set of tenets to help us guide our work, Nicole helped facilitate a considerable amount of role play with the VR headsets helping put our team in the shoes of the participant. You’ll hear directly from Nicole in a future post in this series and she’ll be sharing the tenets that were developed.

Nicole ran a workshop helping our educators develop teaching tenets to use during the program. This was the first time our staff got a look at the VR and we used a lot our time role playing to put staff in the shoes of participants.

At the conclusion of these trainings we put a call out asking for staff to participate as teachers, or guides, for the program. Two people expressed interest — Jihan Thomas, on our education team and Ann Moss, a member of our in-gallery Art Team. Jihan and Ann would work with Barbara Wong, our director of community engagement, to run the program. Additionally, we hired a bilingual project coordinator— Ana Gamboa — to help us throughout.

The program runs under the direction of Barbara Wong (left), our Director of Community Engagement. Ann Moss (center) and Jihan Thomas (right) volunteered to be our teachers. Both are life long Philadelphians who really wanted to engage our communities. They are also from slightly different areas of our education team helping give us a variety of perspectives from their own experiences.

Technical Development

VR work included finding the right hardware, commissioning high resolution 360 degree photography of the collection galleries, and production of the VR experience. Two VR experiences were created; an “explore” mode where users could move from room to room at will and a “directed” mode where our staff could guide users into specific rooms.

Steve Brady, our CTO, along with Deepthi Nune, our network administrator, created the VR experience and helped train our teaching team.

Jihan and Ann learned how to guide participants through experience and worked together to adjust teaching methods for best use of the VR. In practicing with the technology we had a hunch that the best experience would be the “explore” mode — where participants slip on headsets and move from room to room using hotspots embedded into the images. This was technically very simple and it would allow us to let the user guide the experience on their terms.

Jihan and Ann would use a lot of role play in the early days of training.

During role play, the teaching team had the idea to use “explore” mode and ask participants what they were seeing — what interests you as you look around? The answers to these questions were written down on post-its and they would be used to guide the in-person visit. In this way, we could give the participants a great deal of ownership in their experience. They could wander using the VR, tell us what caught their eye, and then we’d teach directly from that material on the Barnes field trip. This methodology reversed our normal operation where tours our are often led by the guide, not the participant.

During meetups at the libraries, we’d ask participants what they see in the headsets and what interested them. The teaching staff would write these down on post-its and then use these themes as a way to guide the onsite visit.

In another very conscious technical decision, we removed the headbands on our VR headsets. We were trying to create a human mediated experience and wanted to encourage face to face interaction. The removal of the bands helped participants take headsets on/off easily, so they could engage with our teaching staff.

Steve Brady, our chief technical officer at the Barnes, did the production himself using readily available tools. You’ll hear him detailing the specifics in our next post.

User Testing

After four months of preparation work we were ready for some user testing. We elected to do this at Central Library, which is just right across the street from the Barnes. Doing the testing at Central would help quickly understand audience response and facilitate a visit to the Barnes without the need of public transportation.

Our user testing setup at Central Library was just a simple table. We’d put out the headsets and people would walk over to try things out.

Participant responses were overwhelmingly positive with users curious to try the technology, elated at the VR experience, and wanting to discuss with our teachers. Hardware glitches were addressed with our technical teams and teaching methods were adjusted as a result of user feedback. There was strong interest and engagement in the program — participants needed very little persuading to try the headsets and were most often seen just coming over to our table out of curiosity. After using the headsets and conversing with our teachers, almost everyone we encountered indicated they were interested in coming to see the Barnes. They signed up on a list to take the escorted field trip, which would happen a few days later.

At the end of every interaction, we’d sign people up for the escorted field trip to the Barnes. Ana Gamboa, our project coordinator, signs up a participant at Central Library. Participants would get texts or emails reminding them about the upcoming visit.

Many citied not knowing what was in “that building across the street” — it was clear that VR was helping introduce the Barnes to new audiences. Leaving Central Library the biggest question remained — how many would return for that Barnes field trip?

Next up you’ll hear from me about lessons learned and measuring success, then Steve will talk about the technical details and Nicole Caruth will end our series with her own view of the program.

The Barnes VR in Neighborhood Libraries pilot project was funded by the Barra Foundation as part of their Catalyst Fund. The program will move forward throughout 2019 under the Knight Center for Digital Innovation in Audience Engagement at the Barnes. Read more about the project in this series of Medium posts.

Project Team —

Barnes Foundation: Shelley Bernstein, Consulting Creative Technologist; Steve Brady, Chief Technical Officer; Ana Gamboa, Special Project Coordinator; Ann Moss, Art Team; Jihan Thomas, School Programs Outreach Coordinator; Alicia Mino, Youth and Family Program Coordinator; and Barbara Wong, Director of Community Engagement.

Free Library: Andrew Nurkin, Deputy Director, Enrichment and Civic Engagement; Kalela Williams, Director of Neighborhood Library Enrichment Programming