Stepping out of the comfort zone to re-imagine the museum experience
This text is an adapted version of my presentation at the Museum Next conference, Melbourne 2017, presenting case studies about experimental digital-first projects and the learning outcome, at the Nordic Museum, Sweden.
Last week’s inspiring Museum Next conference in Melbourne, Australia, was all about museums in a complex world. Complexity because of technological development, as a result of changing behaviors and expectations from museum audiences, and — of course — a rapidly changing political climate.
The conference presentations gave a great framework for meeting the challenges that museums face with digital, the need to change uncompromising work practices, breaking through siloed departments, working in multidisciplinary teams, dealing with uncertainty in a constantly changing world and struggling to stay relevant to museum audiences. Many museums are also recognizing that taking small steps with constant experimenting is a necessity when moving project teams and colleagues ahead in the digital realm. This text is sharing experiences from taking small steps, and creating space for discovery and experimentation.
A new museum experience
Creating a new visitor experience, a customer-centric inclusive experience that is seamlessly delivered across the museum ecosystem, including both online and on site, inevitably moves the museum into new and unknown grounds. This shift strongly challenges both rigid infrastructures and work practices, but also professional roles and personal comfort. Integrating digital technologies, channels and mindsets, facilitating dialogue, participation and co-creation across the organisation requires stepping out of silos, and it requires finding paths to overcome discomfort and uncertainty.
Central to this transformational process, in order to build autonomous multidisciplinary teams, is raising awareness of both challenges and solutions, as well as training staff. The aim is to achieve a common understanding of the impact of digital and of complexity.
From physical first to both physical and online
One of the steps into these new grounds is about shifting focus from in gallery, the physical arenas, and embracing a broader perspective. At the Nordic Museum, Sweden, there are five physical spaces, the main museum building, a castle, two manors and a clergy house. Attracting physical visitors in all these five spaces, is of course a main objective for the museum.
At the same time the rising demand for a seamless experience that bridges onsite and online, and that invites the audience to participation and co-creation, requires us to take on a holistic view of the ecosystem, that also includes the digital arenas.
Connecting the touch points– the points where audiences encounter and interact with the museum onsite and online, demands for experiences that can’t be created with traditional waterfall processes in siloed departments, or without the collaboration of the public. Just as making an exhibition, or an event, today must consider online. Online, not just as a digital representation of the in-gallery experience, or as marketing, but as an experience that delivers value in itself. We are now looking at creating experiences that most likely are digital first.
One of the challenges that museums face is that there is no map, there isn’t a key, as to what this new visitor centric experience should look like, how it should be performed across the museum ecosystem. It depends very much on the topic, the resources of the museum and of the digital maturity of the organisation. The outcome will be revealed through a cyclical process of discovery and experimentation in multidisciplinary teams.
At the beginning of a new project we thus inevitably face uncertainty. And I would argue that reaching a common understanding of this situation, identifying and understanding the uncertainty, is a founding step in the transformation process.
Just buzzwords — or something to consider?
We know some of the issues and challenges we face in this process. Many of them are thrown at us like buzzwords, often hard to make sense of and to implement. Some of them are pure tech terms, like AR/VR, social media, wearables, internet of things, etc. But even more importantly there are others, non tech terms, that are highly relevant and something we have to consider, like engaging in dialogue, facilitate participation and co-creation. We have to work for inclusion, we have to listen, let go of control, make an impact and stay relevant.
Each and everyone of these activities are challenging many traditional museum work practices. For example looking into the engagement process — together, discussing social media tactics — together, producing content — together, discussing analytics — together. If the museum isn’t encouraging stepping ouf of professional roles, and across departmental walls (while of course still contributing with expertise), this can cause discomfort.
To adress the uncertainty coming from these challenges, we have to create enough space for the inevitable transformation, in the midst of a rapidly changing environment. We need to move fast (or faster) and we need to be flexible. And above all make time for experimenting and discovery. Someone once said that it’s like changing a tyre while driving the car. I think that description is still very much spot on.
Stepping out of the comfort zone
So we are stepping into new grounds, which for some can cause strong reactions. This is where we step outside the comfort zone. This is where individuals have to find comfort with ambiguity while using their experience and competences in a completely new setting. Sometimes without clear roles in a process of discovery, without a known setting and outcome. For museums this implies risk taking as it often challenges rigid internal structures, silos, and professional roles.
Making these structures, and the challenges, visible is a way of addressing the impact of digital, addressing the upcoming risks and reducing discomfort. And one of my points is that the challenges are very much different depending on which professional role you have or which part of the museum you work in.
Rapid experimental projects, performed by autonomous teams, combined with longer periods of discovery can help museums expose and overcome some of these challenges.
Making space and time for experimenting and discovery
In 2016 the Nordic Museum participated in the year long Sweden Digital Identities training programme — along with in total seven other major Swedish museum organizations. A multidisciplinary team of six people attended four workshops, performing smaller pilot projects throughout the year.
During this year we have been trying new ways of engaging online with younger audiences, discovering ways of becoming facilitators of online conversation and rethinking ideas about participation and partnerships. A central exercise has been to discover a new tone of voice for online engagement. In order to do so participatory experimental initiatives were launched, encouraging staff to embrace a digital mindset, to step out of professional roles and to take part in short iterative experimental projects. Early on we also brought external partners in.
These initiatives were digital first: Online engagement initiatives, that in turn inspired progamme activities, behind the scenes visits, an exhibition and opened up for possible long term collaboration. For a majority of the participants performing digital first projects was a new experience.
The experimentation proved valuable in the process of implementing digital thinking into the organization and to push us all forward.
Case studies
Counting lamps
The starting point for the experimental projects was a need to evolve ways of attracting younger audiences. The first experiment was a ten-day-long pilot, Counting lamps, designed to engage kids and families online in connection to Earth Hour. At this point the team was also in different ways engaged in the preparations a new exhibition, Nordic light, addressing the cultural historical aspects of light in our society.
A decision was made to connect the pilot initiatives to this exhibition, in order to make more sense of the experimentation to the audiences, to participants of the training programme and to the rest of the museum. This helped framing the initiatives within a larger context and to re-purpose content that was already being produced.
The downside of doing this, connecting experimenting to an existing project was of course that this drew attention from the experimentation. During the last two months before launching the exhibition, there was little time for anyone to work on the pilots. The third and perhaps most important challenge was that it is, unsurprisingly, very difficult to truly integrate digital inititives into an existing project, once the planning has started.
The idea of the first pilot, Counting lamps, was to create awareness of light consumption in Sweden. According to a study the average Swedish home has 42 light sources! This is a lot, and is probably surprising to most people. The aim was to, in connection to Earth hour, in March 2016, when all the lights should be turned off for an hour, create awareness around light consumption by asking kids to count all the lamps in their home and have the adults guessing how many lamps there were. A simple form was created where the audience could state how many lamps they had, as well as upload images of their favorite lamps.
The experimental campaign ran online for less than 48 hours, a very short time span, being announced through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Such a short time span delivered, as expected, a seemingly poor result in terms of contributions and uploaded images. At the same time this sparked a relevant discussion among the team members: Why didn’t we receive more contributions? How do we really engage kids and families online? What triggers engagement ? What we can do to encourage participation? How can we build on the high level of engagement in our social media posts? And, what would have happened if we had ran this experiment over a longer period of time?
Analyzing the process together made visible the steps required to start an online conversation, design for participation and co-creation, creating content, and maintaining and ending a online conversation.
Cosplay ❤ supernatural beings
Having audiences using the museum collections in creative ways, is something that we strive to achieve. As the Nordic Museum is a cultural historical museum, with folklore archives filled with stories about supernatural beings, these became the foundation for our next online conversations. Still with a younger audience in mind. As the stories about supernatural beings came about at a time when there was yet no electric light, a time when darkness was much more present and the fireplace was the only light source at home, it was natural to connect the initiative to the upcoming exhibition Nordic Light.
During the discovery phase we looked into completely other sectors like the gaming industry. One game that caught our eye was YearWalk, a Swedish adventure game based on stories of Nordic supernatural beings and ancient traditions. Learning how others talk about ”our” topics was a way of thinking outside the museum box.
Early on we discussed finding external partners that could help us reaching out, and we decided to approach the Swedish Cosplay community. The result was a competition where cosplayers would be invited to interpret the stories in our archives, creating costumes of supernatural beings, like trolls, wood nymphs or werewolves.
Through this competition we shifted focus from the folklore archives to the intersection between stories, cosplay, the Nordic light exhibition and the museum collections. A completely new area where anything can happen.
A moment of uncertainty
Half way through the training programme, the project team experienced a moment of uncertainty. The fact that the next pilot would be much bigger and therefore something that would be scrutinized by a bigger audience, caused concerns. Concerns that initially were expressed as a big WHY. Why are we doing this? What can we offer a younger audience? Is the archive really relevant to them?
One important take away from these discussions is that the WHY is very much connected to individuals and their profession. Therefore discussing the specific concerns connected to professional roles was crucial to be able to move ahead. Also writing a common statement with personal quotes from the project team members, allowed us to take ownership of the competition.
Answering the WHY with BECAUSE.
Because we we want to see how the old stories can be portrayed by creative and skilled cosplayers. Because we want, through a longer collaboration with a new audience group, create an arena for creative reinterpretation of historical source material, based on stories and ideas from the past. And because we are curious to see what happens when we open the archives to a new audience and watch how archival material is brought to life.
The competition welcomed three skilled cosplayers, to work with the museum for five months to create costumes based on the stories found in the archive. In addition there was a public lecture with a folklore expert as well as a behind the scenes visit for the contestants.
One immediate result was that during the 10 days while applications were accepted, the traffic to the museum website increased, from a younger audience, with more than 60 % compared to the previous year. Communicating this to the team and to the management was crucial to boost confidence and to get further support for our work.
Having a budget for the experimenting and discovery phase has been crucial. Being able to offer some financial support, or sponsoring, as well as financing in-gallery activities became an important part of ”What’s in it for me?”, when asking members of the audience to spend months of hard work together with the museum.
Making the process visible
Making the work process visible to all members of the team has been a way of building a common foundation when scaling initiatives.
During the first pilot campaign there was an initial phase of discovery, a very short period of ideation, framing the conversation in order to stimulate engagement. We have discussed how and when to start a conversation. Linking to an external event, which in this case Earth Hour, gave us important benefits, a natural reason to talk about how we use light at home. We performed a pilot test, and we evaluated.
During the second pilot we repeated the discovery phase, a period of ideation, and we decided to collaborate with external partners. In this pilot we also launched a campaign, going through all the stages of time planning, choosing channels, discussing copyright/licensing, allocating a budget, plan for participation, produce new content, repurpose old content, find images to use, create a publishing plan, listen etc. And performing ongoing evaluation.
This cyclical process has made all steps visible and allowed for us to scrutinize the work we have been doing. To practice the evaluation and to make sure the performing of each step works smoothly, makes it easier to scale, as everyone is growing familiar with the process and we can anticipate the challenges in the next cycle.
Working in rapid cycles–one size fits all?
Some of us thrive in these cyclical processes, this venturing into the unknown at a fast pace of repeating and scaling. This quote sums it up rather accurately:
”…this cyclical process seems to be on steroids. We venture into an unknown space, tackle a new challenge, get comfortable, and then start all over with some new unknown. For many of us, that’s why we do this: constant challenge is what we thrive on.”
Quote from The Simply Measured Blog
http://simplymeasured.com/blog/digital-is-going-dark-only-early-adopters-will-thrive-in-2017/#sm.0000plhfg3x89cwvwjw1c8959ujpj
But for most people this is more or less stressful, which is why introducing experimentation and phases of discovery has to be done in a strategic way.
Don’t push your colleagues out of their comfort zone. Jump together!
Breaking down a problem into a actionable steps, allowing for the project team to take ownership of the solution and deploy it at scale, can create comfort where there is uncertainty. By applying cyclical processes across a longer period of time, the team will have a chance to mature and grow, while the process will evolve and become refined.
We go from learning how to make the right choices to actually create a great outcome on the basis of the right choices.
Making space for this transformation process, for discovery and experimentation, can be done, as in this case, in the setting of a training programme, or as we see in other museums through lab initiatives. In either case, the experimental and allowing environment makes stepping out of the comfort zone a little less uncomfortable.
Positive results can be delivered early on through small initial experiments, as well as creating a solid foundation for scaling projects and boosting confidence. Refining the process and getting everyone onboard around digital, isn’t however done in one experimental cycle. It takes time.
Once the space for experimenting and discovery is closing, it is time to implement the process and new work methods into the organisation. This is where it is crucial for the management to give full support, not just by allowing for and setting up an autonomous team, but actively making sure that the team actually is equipped, trained and confident to take the next steps.
