BklynMuse: failing fast, retooling faster = version 2

This year, I had the privilege of speaking at Webstock and one of the things I learned from listening to the other speakers was the benefit of fast, iterative cycles.  It was a long plane ride home from New Zealand, but by the end of it, I was determined that we revisit BklynMuse with the idea to fix substantial issues as quickly as possible, get it back into the hands of our visitors—watch and learn from what we see happen—rinse and repeat.  This post is going to detail what we saw failing and the changes we’ve made to the guide. Fair warning, this is going to be epic, so jump with me if this interests you.

Let’s recap.

BklynMuse is a gallery guide for web-enabled smart phones (iphone, droid, blackberry).  At its heart, it’s a recommendation system powered by people—as you use it and actively “like” objects in our galleries, the guide will show you recommendations based on those preferences.  If you are scratching your head at this point, go back and re-read the primer from the August ’09 launch.

Location, location, location.

This is, by far, the biggest fail and still remains the biggest challenge ahead of us.  In our version 1 beta testing, 10/10 testers expected the device to automatically locate them within the gallery and were frustrated when it didn’t.  The reality is, that technology is just not there yet once you get inside the building.   Geolocation works really well in the wild, but it fails in galleries where cell signal is spotty and object location mapping is complicated. In addition, our use of cell-phone repeaters to extend signal within our walls does nothing but make an even bigger mess of the issue.

Signage #fail.  Signage was too small and got lost in a sea of sameness trying to blend in.

In version 1, we assigned room codes to each area of the museum, but ran into major problems when the signs were too small and blended in too much to the surroundings.  With so many signs going into the building, the general concern was that it would be overwhelming for people who wouldn’t want to use the system, so the choice was made to try and make this signage blend in.  Of course, that meant it was difficult for those using the system to find the signs, so we had a Catch-22 going on.

In version 1, above, visitors had trouble with drop down menus as a way to set location.

When folks did find the signs, they found the drop down menus difficult to use.  We thought about using QR codes or similar, but as an institution with a community-minded mission, we want the guide to remain as accessible as possible and that means striving to ensure it works across many devices.  What we give up in a scenario like this is the ability to use built-in hardware easily.  Not to mention, putting QR codes on the 5,764 objects on view would be just a tad distracting. We thought about maps, but maps present a problem on a small screen (doable, but tough) and, most importantly, for every person who understands a floor plan there’s another who can’t stand them.  Maps might solve the problem for some people, but they could easily create frustration for another set of users.

In version 2, above, we focus on accession number searching.  If people have trouble, we’ve got an example to explain what to look for on a label.

In the end, we simplified in version 2.  Room codes are gone and we’ve re-engineered the home page to focus on accession number searching and we’ve added some education about what we mean by accession number (because, that’s obvious to everyone…right?).

Congrats, you found the Bird Lady!  Now, view the objects in this room.

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