We are incredibly excited that Bloomberg Philanthropies has funded a three-year initiative as part of Bloomberg Connects and it gives us the opportunity to significantly improve…
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As Shelley introduced in her last post, we have the very ambitious goal of overhauling our visitor experience through an initiative funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies…
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A series of internal meetings got us set on the path for this project, but we wanted to test it with our visitors. To do…
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As Sara mentioned in her previous posts, we’ve been careful in this project to let visitor need pave the way toward an idea. It was…
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If you’ve been reading the blog lately you know we’ve been taking stock of our digital efforts and making considerable changes. I’ve been discussing what’s not…
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“Three Simple Truths” from The Agile Samurai by Jonathan Rasmussen: 1. It is impossible to gather all the requirements at the beginning of a project….
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In previous Bloomberg Connects blog posts we’ve described the iterative process of determining how we can engage the visitor, enhancing their museum experience. The ASK app (our…
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When Apple released iOS7 in 2013 one of the new features introduced was iBeacon. This technology would now enable Apple devices to pick up broadcasting…
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When I started as Web Designer for the museum in January, I assumed I had been hired for a website redesign. Rookie mistake. As you’ve…
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Brian and Jennie have been talking about our forthcoming mobile application, which is one of the public facing components of our Bloomberg Connects project, but…
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As Shelley mentioned in her previous post, we’ve tweaked our comment kiosks over the past year or so, shifting them to an ask functionality only…
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In getting our ASK iPad pilot into full swing for Bloomberg Connects we needed to nail down how we were going to present the answers…
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I was very excited by the prospect of user testing in the field when I started working on the Bloomberg Connects project. As a web…
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Earlier this week I covered how we have been testing the ASK app internally. Today I am going to talk about how we user tested…
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By and large, most software in the world is made to a spec enshrined into immutability, then interpreted differently by various parts of the teams…
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In the web development world, RESTish APIs (Application Programming Interface) have slowly become the de facto standard by which different computing systems are used to…
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From the outset we knew that the dashboard—the web application our audience engagement team will use to answer incoming questions—was going to be a huge…
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In previous blog posts we’ve discussed the results of our initial user testing. In this blog post we’ll talk about the process and challenges of getting…
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Every year a gathering of hackers and information security professionals convene in Washington, DC to discuss how awful and broken the state of computer security…
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We are excited to announce that the Brooklyn based design firm, SITU Studio, will be working with us to create a new, more friendly and…
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The dashboard—the web application our audience engagement team will use to answer incoming questions—is a complex application with many parts and before we hit the…
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Location aware technology as part of Bloomberg Connects is pretty vital. We use it to tell the staff answering questions which gallery a visitor is standing…
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1 + 1 = 2? Obvious right? How about (2 + 2 x 4)^2? That’s a little more complicated but not so bad either. Over…
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On the surface, it might seem that our Bloomberg Connects project is all about tech. After all, this particular Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative is specifically for…
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I’ve just joined the Bloomberg Connects project as the Audience Engagement Lead. I will be heading the team that will be answering inquiries from visitors…
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The most basic goal of the ASK app is to connect visitors to works of art in the museum. Although the conduit for this connection…
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We have an incredible opportunity in front of us; the folks who will be using our ASK app are coming through the door every day, so we…
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The ASK mobile app has gone through many design iterations and has continually evolved in a quest to to offer an exceptional user experience. In…
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The most passionate debates in our office have centered around how we are using geofencing in our upcoming app to present different information to users dependent upon…
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I am happy to announce that we’ve identified and hired six individuals who are knowledgeable, experienced at connecting people with art, and excited to take…
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ASK is a tool that allows any museum visitor using the Museum’s app to have the opportunity to be in direct and immediate contact with…
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I know that everyone on the team agrees—spending time learning about the collection is a privilege, an honor, and a lot of fun. Training started…
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Our ASK team has a number of exciting challenges ahead of them. How do you communicate information about art in an informed and engaging way…
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As we march toward our June launch for ASK, it’s a good moment to look back at some of the issues we’ve faced along the way….
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In my previous post, I talked a lot about agile development and where we failed it. Agile has also thrown us some serious curves in…
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When you’ve got any tool that is designed to answer questions the danger is that people think it’s an automated system; with ASK we need to…
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As I introduced in a previous post, SITU Studio was brought on board to design a mobile, flexible, and temporary set of furniture components that…
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Last month we had the pleasure of introducing the six members of our audience engagement team, the specialists who will be engaging with visitors via…
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In every project there’s always a moment where the timeline starts to shrink. You start to look at your launch date and the to do list (ours is…
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As you’ve been reading, ASK Brooklyn Museum isn’t just about an app—it’s an initiative that seeks to re-envision our visitor experience from top to bottom. That “top”…
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Shelley and I like to cast a wide net when looking for inspiration and ideas, often looking outside the museum sector from the customer experience…
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When we first began thinking about the lobby reconfiguration, the need for flexible and moveable was paramount and all of our discussions with the design…
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We’ve talked a lot about how user expectations helped shape our implementation. There are times when it’s incredibly valuable to listen to your users, but there…
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At the Brooklyn Museum, we like to take inspiration from many things. After recently watching “Mad Max: Fury Road,” we realized to make our servers…
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Sara and I couldn’t be happier to have ASK featured on Museum 2.0, so instead of blogging our own progress this week we’ll point you…
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What is the pedagogy of a text message conversation? Can you actually have a pedagogy of texting? If so, what does it look like? How…
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In my last post, I discussed our “opening response” and slight tweaks to make that a better experience. Our “first response” (the first message the…
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If you think about it, building a project is fairly straightforward. It’s a one way street of sorts; a controlled process with steps involved, tests we can run, and timelines…
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Perhaps its the nature of an agile project, or just this agile project, but at each stage of ASK Brooklyn Museum we find ourselves facing…
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Knowing what we know about our visitors, we figured pretty early on that we would need to offer face time with staff as part of…
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We all struggle with how to measure success. We’re thinking a lot about this right now as we begin to put the pieces together from…
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As summer draws to a close, so does our testing for the location of our ASK team. You may remember the results from our earlier testing in…
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Things have been pretty quiet over here for a while—have you noticed? We had been blogging our progress on ASK weekly and in my last post…
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We developed ASK based on the premise (determined by over a year’s worth of pilot projects) that our visitors want to talk about art with…
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In our last post, Sara discussed our ongoing definition and refinement of the ASK app’s engagement goals and our recent collaborative workshop with some of…
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I’m sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that getting out of your own head every once in a while can have great benefits. We’ve…
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In one of my previous posts, way back in March 2015, I discussed our initial plans for a shared research database (an “ASK wiki”) which…
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It’s been just over a year since I wrote about the realities of installing ibeacon to scale. Our ASK app, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, has been active…
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Our Android release is coming in April. I’m often asked about our strategy to expand into Android when 74% of our users are on iOS…
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As reported earlier, the Android version of our ASK app is due to launch in April. For the most part, the app will look and…
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Hard to believe that it’s been a full year since we began the initial hiring process for our ASK team. We’ve accomplished so much in…
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As the ASK Team gears up for the app’s Android launch in April and expands to two full-time members and four part-time members, it seems…
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ASK Brooklyn Museum for Android is now available on Google Play. We had one early quandary, but this was a fairly straightforward development process. That is, until we…
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It’s been a year since the original ASK team arrived at the Museum, and we’ve been reflecting on all the ways ASK has evolved over…
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Every second counts when the ASK team is responding to visitor questions. With that in mind, a few weeks ago we looked into how we…
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A number of things happen after a visitor has a chat with our ASK team. At the end of each day, the ASK team takes the…
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Extremely smart people dedicated to the field of machine learning have made tools that are not only better, but far more accessible than they have…
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If you’ve been following our posts lately, you’ve noticed our tech team has been doing some amazing behind-the-scenes work in anticipation of our Android launch…
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I’m delighted to share that my suitcase was a little bit heavier on my return trip from the annual meeting of the American Alliance of…
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I know it’s been pretty much radio silence here since my last post about the MUSE Awards, but rest-assured, we have been busy! Over the…
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If you’ve been following our blog, you know we spend a great deal of time focusing on getting our ASK app in more people’s hands….
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Our entire ASK program has been built upon regular user testing and evaluation, which we’ve always completed ourselves…until now. Since we’ve been trying for over…
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In my last post I wrote about our process for deciding which collection highlights to include in ASK’s new self-guided tour, titled Highlights and Hidden Gems….
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If you’ve ever visited the Brooklyn Museum on a Target First Saturday, you know what a special experience we try to provide for our visitors….
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In a recent conversation with colleagues from the Peabody Essex Museum, Sara and I fielded a question that frequently arises: which works of art do…
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