Whadda you want? Pre-selection and Personalization.
This is the fourth post in a series detailing the lessons we are learning from our testing sessions with the wearable.
We are in kind of a sweet spot; we can develop on new hardware and since so few own wearables their expectations about what it can do are much less defined than a smartphone, for example. Most users have used museum smartphone apps, most of those apps do pretty much the same thing, so expectations of a museum app can/will do are pretty much set in users minds. Not so on the wearable.
In designing a project on the wearable, we were lucky; no one had expectations about what it should do, but they did have ideas about what it could do and these centered on various aspects of personalization.
Pre-selection
In interviews, testers reported a desire to pre-select content in some way. Often this was not described as “I want content about this specific thing” — visitors reported liking the random content they received on the wearable. But many participants described wanting a way to pre-select categories of information at the beginning of their visit to help customize their experience.
At the end of the day, only 22% of users reported wanting fully random content. 43% reported wanting pre-selection options and 35% reported changeable content would be a reason to return.
As a result, the pre-selection of content will be part of a wearable production project; visitors will be able to select a variety of thematic “tours” to be delivered to their wearable. These tours will be timed to expire much like exhibitions. The move in creating seasonal tours is to increase repeat visitation to a collection that cannot be moved, rearranged, or literally changed in any way; selection of tours that show you new things each and every time you visit will be a key part of the production deploy.
Nicely, we know an onboarding process that walks users through a pre-selection process is a possibility. I’ve seen this work quite well in Dallas for DMA Friends, so we have a solid example to think about as we move forward with this development.
Personalization
We have two groups of users at the Barnes — those who know us well and have been multiple times and those audiences who are fully new to the experience and are on a first visit. As we move forward with audience development strategies, it’s important that any project — digital or otherwise — be inclusive of both sets of users.
Among the experienced, testers described themselves as “knowing a lot about art” and/or reported they were “very familiar with” our collection; some of these users reported finding the short text delivered to the wearable as not sophisticated enough for their needs — “pedestrian” was a word that cropped up a few times. Among the less experienced, users reported finding the text length and subject matter were “about right.”
Similar to the desire for pre-selected content as a way to customize the experience, in a production project we intend to provide multiple sets of tours based on a self-described knowledge level. Asking questions about familiarity of the collection can become a part of the onboarding process and the answers would help us deliver content customized to a knowledge level.
Now, you may be thinking…hey, we’ve been talking about personalization for a long time, but scaling it is what’s difficult. Well, normally, I’d agree with you, but in this instance I think it’s doable precisely because we are working with short form content.
In creating content for this prototype we discovered that the content authoring is accomplished much more quickly than anything we’ve produced in the past. Authoring for the prototype is a much quicker process precisely because of its short form; we don’t have the production burden that comes with audio/video or even extended labels.
In a production project, wearable content will be customized based on visitors’ personal preferences while still being sustainable internally. For example, we can have two versions of the same “tour” — one that might speak to users who regularly visit us and goes a little deeper and one that might speak to newer visitors who may want the basics first.
Data Change Among Demographic Subsets
Visitors were selected at random and asked to participate in testing based on the time of day they went to the collection door. As part of our survey we asked demographics in the form of a person’s age, information about their museum going habits, and their depth of experience with technology in their lives. With age, in particular, we wanted to ensure we were getting a testing sample that was inclusive of everyone who visits us — participants have been representative across all age groups: 20s=22%, 30s=27%, 40s=13%, 50s=14%, 60s=15%, 70s=7%.
I thought data on this project would change quite considerably as we sectioned by each value, but surprisingly, it didn’t at all — most of the percentages were very close to equal across all constituents. So, for example, those with technology experience didn’t express notably differently opinions than those without experience, those born after 1970 didn’t differ much at all from those born before, etc.
The one place where we saw data change was in the content needs. More experienced users — defined as those who visit museums and art galleries more than three times per year — were looking for deeper knowledge and, even, more esoteric knowledge. Users who were new to us, new to museums, and new to art history felt like what we provided spoke to their needs.
Our next task in testing will center on these two sets of users and content creation for each group. The results will help us create a content plan for a production project.
The Barnes Foundation wearable digital prototype is funded by the Barra Foundation as part of their Catalyst Fund.
Want more info? Read more about the Barnes Wearable on Medium and follow the Barnes Foundation publication, where we’ve got multiple authors writing about our projects.
