How to implement audience focus in a museum’s DNA
NEO meets… Christian Gries
What we all appreciate about NEO Collections is the great people we meet. We therefore created a cross-institutional event to invite experts from all over the (museum) world to learn about their work, exchange ideas together with our colleagues and pick their brains on the future of museum collections.
Since for the partner museums of NEO Collections the digital and analogue visitors are equally important (see the digital strategies of Übersee-Museum Bremen and the one of Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg) we are eager to learn more about how to take them seriously and to get to know them better. Therefore we invited art historian Dr. Christian Gries. He gave us insights into the user/visitor research conducted at at the Württemberg State Museum in Stuttgart. There, he is head of the Department of Digital Museum Practice and IT. He also co-founded the Munich-based agency and consultancy Kulturkonsorten and runs a highly regarded blog on digital museum practice (in German). With the Digital Strategies project of the State Office of the Non-State Museums in Bavaria, which Christian led from 2015 to 2020, he has also become one of the most important catalysts for the digital development of German museums — #DigSMus
We want to get to know our (digital) visitors better. How do we start?
Christian: Ist all about the „T“: tracking and talking. Tracking means increasing one’s knowledge of existing visits (human and machine) to established digital offerings and systems. This leads into quantitative analysis. For the qualitative analysis, other criteria are certainly needed. For this, it is essential to seek dialogue and exchange with the target groups. This is about “talking”. Every conversation, every survey brings you further. In the synopsis of the results, the view of the digital visits matures.
During your ongoing user research — what was your most surprising insight?
Christian: We started strategic tracking in individual offers a few years ago and with each analysis we get to know our visitors better in their digital behaviour, habits and needs. What surprised us most was the abundance and complexity of the possible data, the heterogeneity of the systems and the fast-moving needs of the audience. Nevertheless, we are focussing our learnings in extended persona profiles/milieu studies and are thus at least becoming sharper and more efficient in the discussions about the target groups of our digital products. Together with Johannes Bernhard I tried to formulate this approach here.
We perceive that digital and analogue visitors are equally important. How can we integrate this understanding into our daily work?
Christian: We have the same conviction and try to implement it holistically in all projects and our daily work. The visitor experience serves as a compass for our actions in the digital as well as the analogue. For the Landesmuseum Württemberg our opening strategy means not only a clear commitment to open access, but also to a newly lived audience orientation as the brand core of the museum, quasi as our DNA — digital, analogue, hybrid. With a view to the visitor experience we prepare our exhibitions in workshops focussing visitor experience. For some colleagues this is a hard way: conception of an exhibition not (only) about the objects, but explicitly also about the visitors.
Our digital strategy formulates this position. The agenda of the digital museum practice department is geared to this topic and tries to integrate it holistically into all projects, products and departments.
