As a follow-up to our ASK-guided gallery tours for Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving and Pride Month, the ASK team has created a new…
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“Celebrate Pride Month! Our team of friendly experts guide you on a tour of LGBTQ+ artists and themes throughout the Museum via text message, chatting…
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The second evaluation completed by Pratt grad students last semester examined the ways visitors were using ASK. Partially inspired by wanting to know if people were participating…
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Our exhibition Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving closed on May 12 and we’re taking a moment to review our ASK engagement for this show….
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In my last post I detailed how I knitted together thematic connections across different collections and what effect in-gallery labels have on object engagement, but…
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While I wanted to learn more about visitors complete interactions through the app, without the ability to systematically dive into chats, I chose to focus…
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I ended my last post with a brief exploration of what people are asking about via ASK. I was particularly interested in going beyond the…
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Our major exhibition for this spring, Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, has been very well-attended and well-received so far. It has also posed unique…
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During my first semester as the Pratt Visitor Experience & Engagement fellow I was able to learn a significant amount about ASK user behavior—despite limitations…
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In my last post, I laid out some of the challenges working with the current metrics dashboard and the data exporting process for ASK. Despite…
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As the Pratt Visitor Experience & Engagement Fellow, I was tasked with conducting a deep dive into ASK-related data. There are several research questions that…
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From March through July 2018, the Brooklyn Museum was the home of the multimedia exhibition David Bowie is. It was the twelfth and final stop…
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I will admit, I’m a little embarrassed that it’s been more than a year since our last post. Rest assured, while we may have been…
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For the majority of this project, we have been fixated on use rate. After all, it’s easy to track and is a very clear measurement…
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Sometimes we plan and execute ASK-related projects on a long timeline, but occasionally a project will happen organically and almost take us by surprise. Using…
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One of the questions we’ve had since the beginning of the project was if ASK is appropriate for a mounted kiosk of some kind. We…
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One thing we’ve learned through all our ASK pilots and testing is that people love an incentive. Free drink tickets finally helped us to attract…
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Last week we wrapped up our final planned pilot project to help determine the direction for ASK 2.0. Another somewhat obvious solution to the challenge…
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As promised, this week’s post is on our second pilot in search of our direction for ASK 2.0. For the first pilot, we provided devices…
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As I prefaced in my post last week, while ASK has been successful from an engagement standpoint, we are stalled at between 1-2% use rate….
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Radio silence from us usually means we’re up to something and this time is no different. Since our last post in May, we’ve been looking…
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One of the things we learned from ERm’s evaluation was that ASK users really appreciate when the responses to their questions are well timed (i.e….
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This month marks one year since the reinstallation of the Museum’s fifth-floor American art galleries, formerly known as “American Identities: A New Look.” This anniversary…
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Early on in the course of ASK, Shelley and I noticed some really interesting patterns related to where people tended to use the app. While…
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Our special exhibition “Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern” opened on March 3, and—not surprisingly for a show about such a famous artist—it’s turned out to be…
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As part of our original messaging with soft launch, we deployed gallery labels advertising the app. This first round included questions that we hoped would…
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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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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 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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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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Earlier this week, Sara introduced the topic of ASK’s new collaboration with our Group Tours office and our efforts to shape the content of our…
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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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