Revising our ASK Engagement Manual

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 this time. Last December, Sara posted about our collective efforts to document the various phases and facets of the ASK project, including an ASK Team Engagement Manual originally compiled by Monica Marino. Sara wrote that we had been codifying our methods “through experimentation, conversation, a lot of trial-and-error with test groups, and continued examination,” and all of that remains true.

The team brainstormed to compile helpful reminders and new info for the manual.

The team brainstormed to compile helpful reminders and new info for the manual.

Download our ASK team training manual to see how we've codified conversations via texting.

Download our ASK team training manual to see how we’ve codified conversations via texting.

As we neared our ASK Android launch, it felt like the right time for a little “spring cleaning.” In March the ASK team did a brainstorming exercise with our ever-popular post-it notes, asking themselves: What methods for engagement and research have we found most useful? What new technical features should we remember to use? What advice would we give to a new team member?

Using this internal feedback, we recently expanded our engagement and training manual, and we’d like to share it here. It now reflects new features that our Tech team developed for the dashboard; a few tweaks to our thinking about pedagogy in this context; updated protocol for archiving visitor chats as “snippets;”

our favorite research resources; and words of wisdom from the ASK team, which recently reached its capacity of six members again.

Now we’re all preparing for some major gallery reinstallations around the building—a topic for a future post!

Jessica Murphy

Jessica Murphy

Jessica Murphy, Manager of Visitor Engagement, joined the Brooklyn Museum in 2015 as a member of the ASK team. In her current position she leads the team in their interactions with the Museum’s visitors through the ASK app and coordinates their ongoing training and development. Jessica received her B.A. from Fordham University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History (with a concentration in American Art) from the University of Delaware. She previously worked as Research Associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (contributing to exhibitions and publication such as “Alfred Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe” and “The American West in Bronze”), as Contractual Educator at the Met, and as Curatorial Assistant at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has also worked as a freelance writer on cultural topics. She welcomes any opportunity, in any medium, to connect people and art.

Thursday, April 7th, 2016
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Technology

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