We’re Baaaack!!!!

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 last six months we’ve seen a lot of changes at the Brooklyn Museum. For starters, with new leadership often comes new organizational charts, new staff, and new titles. The ASK program has been moved from the Exhibitions department to Marketing & Communications, a department that—believe it or not—didn’t exist until spring 2016. My title and responsibilities will be shifting to reflect a focus on digital engagement, and I’m working closely with Jessica Murphy, our ASK team lead, and Christina White, our Head of Technology on ASK and other digital projects, which you’ll read about here as well.

A team from Mahuki, a digital innovation incubator run by Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, scope out the ASK dashboard with team member Andy Hawkes.

Over the last six months, we’ve had a veritable parade of awesome people swinging by to check out ASK and we have really enjoyed meeting folks from all over the world and chatting about engagement.  Our primary focus, however, continues to be getting ASK into more visitors’ hands and we’ve had a few irons in the fire:

• We’ve been offering an incentive on Target First Saturdays, an historically slow time for app traffic, which has proven to entice a deeper engagement than expected along with pretty good uptake. I’ll share more on this later.
• We are working with Laval Bryant, our head of group tours, to develop a self-guided tour using ASK. This tour will feature highlights and hidden gems of our collection, and has been quite challenging to create. How do we provide info in a tour-like fashion while maintaining the personal and conversational basis of ASK? Jessica will share insights on this in a later post.
• Christina has been spearheading our plan to install outdoor digital kiosks that will serve as a dynamic and welcoming aspect on our plaza. The kiosks will feature ASK content among other information related to museum offerings.
• The team has moved to their final destination, which is an office behind-the-scenes. Jessica will touch on team visibility, but the location in the Great Hall, while visible, was terrifically challenging as a work space for the team and our metrics just didn’t show any increase in app usage with the team visible again.
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we are working with an outside marketing firm, ERm, on an evaluation of the ASK program. We anxiously await results and recommendations from the team at ERm, who conducted surveys and focus groups in November and December.

We’ll share details about all of this and more in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!