I’ve long been a critic of QR Codes. When I look around, I see low adoption rates, technical hurdles for end users and some really annoying uses in the marketing sector—who wants that?
Do we really need QR codes on TSA signs? Is this sign not clear enough without them? What's even more frustrating is the codes don't even send you to a site that's optimized for mobile.
As critical as I am, there have been some really good uses in museums and I think we are starting to see a tide change in New York City. For starters, the city is using them on all the building permits, so you can learn more as you pass construction sites. There are plans in the works for QR codes on all the restaurant inspections plaques. If there’s one thing that would motivate people to jump the technical hurdles of installing a QR reader, this would be it—the notion that we could see the actual violations that led to a restaurant’s letter grade makes QR truly useful for those of us who obsess about where we eat.
When looking at a possible implementation at the Brooklyn Museum, there are considerations to think about—we’ve got a community-minded mission that takes accessibility very seriously and we are aware that a very large portion of our visitors don’t have the smartphones required to use the codes. That said, we want to start looking at what this equation means for us and, as a result, we’ve just installed QR codes in the Museum as an experiment to see how visitors respond. We are evaluating several different types of uses.
To increase visibility, a code is printed on the back of our entrance tags. Scanning it takes you to a page that describes what scanning codes throughout the building will get you.
In The Dinner Party and Luce Visible Storage, you can use the QR to jump to mobile versions of our collections database. Each of these galleries provides limited information on the walls and, instead, we ask visitors to use kiosks to retrieve information about objects. By installing QR codes, we are providing additional means to view that information via mobile, but no one is left out of the experience—if they don’t have the technology, they can use the computers instead.
Scanning the QR code in the gallery takes you to a search page formatted for mobile devices. If you can't scan the code, signage also gives you the mobile URL. If you don't have a mobile device, you can still use in-gallery kiosks.
We are also testing the idea of QR as an on-demand platform. For the last year, our mobile game, Gallery Tag!, has been integrated into our mobile app, but its use has been quite low. While we have gotten good feedback from visitors who’ve played it, the visibility of the game buried within our mobile presence has made it difficult to find, so we are putting the game behind a QR code to see if it helps make the application more visible within the exhibition space.
Lastly, we’ve created a poetry trail throughout the museum using the poems that Raj Arumugam composed using our collection online. This takes community-generated content from the web and puts it next to the objects in the gallery, showcasing a community voice in the permanent collections. We are interested to see if codes are scanned for individual objects and if visitors are interested in community generated content as another layer in the gallery. The question does remain—can this content be found? QR codes are striking and catch the eye, but with 3000+ objects on view, it will be difficult to find the 30 codes sprinkled throughout the museum that reveal poems. This part of the trial may prove to give us information that is too limited.
QR codes installed near objects in the permanent collection link to poetry.
In the QR code trial, we want to make sure the codes do not create unnecessary confusion or exclusion for visitors and, to this end, we’ve created a mobile palm card to help explain things. While we still expect use to be fairly low, we’ll be looking at metrics and comparing them to other types of mobile use, namely our mobile website and our mobile app—we are curious to see if pickup rate increases as we move to an on-demand system using readily off the shelf technology.
Mobile palm cards explain the various mobile options, including directions on finding and installing QR readers. Cards are located at the visitor desk in the lobby and all the floors along with our maps and audio guide information.
This experiment may change how we develop for mobile in the future, so I’ll report back on our findings in a couple of months. In the meantime, we’d love for you to come try them out and let us know about your experience.
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Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum
This all sounds interesting. What about using QR codes for exhibit accessibility? Maybe to bring up larger-print or audio versions of plaques on smartphones.
Hi Jonathan,
That’s an interesting use for sure, but I think duplicating the information on the wall will frustrate most visitors. If we did something like this, we’d almost have to somehow identify these as being for a specific use.
I’m not sure how successful that would be in the end and I’d rather see accessibility thought of from a less tech perspective. Wall labels should have a typeface that’s large enough to read – that’s a basic we aim for every day. Also, I’m not sure we have resources to make an audio version of every text label and, if we did, we’d have galleries covered in QR codes – I don’t think that’s so good.
Also, we’d have to survey our audience and find out what portion of them actually have the phones before doing a project like this. My primary concern with this is overall low adoption and potential confusion. Before we go on, I think it’s important to see how the general audience responds and then think about niche uses and survey those audiences accordingly.
Hi Shelley,
All stuff I hadn’t thought through. Ah, the comfort of being just a detached commenter and not the person <i)actually responsible </i) for making it all work.
I'm sure low adoption and confusion will be part and parcel of QRs for a while, even with the recent (minor) explosion around the city you mentioned in the post.
Those QR codes on restaurant rating plaques can’t come soon enough!
Thanks for this thoughtful post! I’m curious to see how things turn out, as well as if the presence of QR codes positively affects visitors’ perception of the Brooklyn Museum being current in its use of technology – whether or not they choose to use it.
I’m a fan of QR codes generally, and these seem like solid applications. I have a feeling widespread usage among the general public is coming — they’ve got great potential to extend the museum experience (and a whole lot of other things) in cool ways.
Shelley,
Great post and one that is close to my heart. I am a massive advocate of technology and anything that can potentially enhance the visitors experience has to be considered.
My organisation is in the planning stage of relocation and amalgamation of multiple museums in order house our collection in one centralised location. This will obviously involve a complete design. In this process I am keen that any and all technology is explored.
Whilst smartphones may not be used by everyone, we cannot ignore the rate of growth across the main smartphone vendors. The release of the iPhone 4s has seen huge sales, whilst the growth of Android based smartphones has been astronomical.
I shall watch for your updates with interest.
Arran
Hello Shelley,
Great use of the QR code. It seems you would have so many options for their use you might have a tough time choosing.
Virtual plaques in multiple languages.
Connections to videos and other multimedia.
And speaking in terms of the participatory culture, allowing patrons to post their own QR codes perhaps.
It could potentially become a designers nightmare. But allowing for more access would be tremendous.
Makes me want to come to the museum just to try it out.
Great work.
Great to hear about your thoughtful approach to QR and I look forward to seeing how things go. I’ve tended to be on the more optimistic side of QR codes, mainly just as a useful tool for the moment for gaining increased levels of information in exhibits; but like you I’m quite sensitive to the technical barriers and inadequate accessibility due to smart phone usage. QRpedia has really inspired me, however, particularly because of its implications for seamlessly providing access to information in many languages. I recently wrote up an extensive case study about the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis’ use of QRpedia codes. I was most shocked to find that some of our more specific/unique Wikipedia articles have upwards of 60% of their total page view traffic coming from QR scans (as opposed to users browsing and finding it the usual way in Wikipedia.) (In December one article actually was 94% total traffic from scans.)
Let me know if you have any questions (or ideas – the QRpedia folks are always looking for feedback.) http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Case_studies/The_Children%27s_ Museum_of_Indianapolis/QRpedia
There’s a lot to think about here with these stats, so thanks for posting. QR codes aside, we’ve had a lot of luck with in-gallery wikipedia projects – take a look at Wikipop. Clearly, there’s a lot to the clear and fun signage that goes with this project, too. Like wikipop, I wonder if saying the content is sourced from wikipedia does a lot to increase interest across the board.