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September 9th, 2009
Online communities offer many opportunities to market a museum, event or exhibition. But their interactive nature means you must tread carefully
MARKETING
The temptation to use the internet’s many channels and communities for marketing is great. Thousands of people can be reached at once, often in well-targeted groups.
And if a museum starts a Facebook group or Twitter feed, its “fans” and “followers” are just waiting for marketing messages to tell them what’s going on at the museum - right? Well, not quite, because marketing, in the conventional sense, sits rather uncomfortably in the world of social media.
In many ways, social media are a great way of spreading the word about what a museum is up to, especially if people are involved in those activities. The problem is, the net answers back. Or rather, individuals do - and that is where it gets tricky, at least from a branding and marketing perspective.
A recent scuffle centred on the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in New York illustrates this. In May, New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz used Facebook to comment on the galleries at Moma, which he felt significantly under-represented the work of female artists.
The museum’s chief communications officer, Kim Mitchell, responded to the Facebook group, but in a press release-style statement, using a regal-sounding “we” that irked many online readers who seemingly felt shut off from a proper dialogue by Moma’s corporate communications department.
Without scrutinising the precise language, it is sufficient to say that the museum thought it was engaging with people through social media, while others found Mitchell’s tone to be impersonal and inappropriate for a web 2.0 community that expects discourse.
Saltz was also criticised for using Facebook rather than a more open forum to air his opinions, as only Facebook “friends” could respond directly.
NEW MEDIA, NEW RULES
This episode demonstrates how marketing, public relations and branding do not work in the same way online as they do in traditional advertising, posters, leaflets or direct marketing.
Commenting on Moma’s response to the growing online conversation instigated by Saltz, ArtsJournal.com editor Douglas McLennan wrote, “Traditional PR notices are not only ineffective in this new era of many-to-many communication, but can make things worse. And what might have been a real opportunity to meaningfully engage this community has been lost.”
This is a sticky subject that, for most institutions, is still in formation and flux. If you are thinking of reaching out online for marketing purposes, first think carefully about how you will respond to conversations - favourable or critical - when they develop.
Where does the museum’s voice reside? Is it with the press office, the marketing team, curatorial staff, the director, or all of these? How do you want your brand to be projected and how closely do you want to police it? Do you care about negative comments and will you engage their authors?
Almost certainly, the view on these types of question - and the structures and processes that support it - will have to change as you engage online, as Fiona Romeo, head of digital media at the National Maritime Museum, London, explains.
“Typically [at NMM], every piece of communication would be controlled with style guidelines, editing and so on. Interviews would be run through the press office and everything was centrally controlled. But over the past couple of years we’ve been moving towards more distributive content.”
The web will serve up a multitude of views about a museum and given that these cannot be controlled, it is better to learn how to respond. Traditionally, bad press is often ignored in the hope that the story will soon blow over. But online comments usually hang around indefinitely, and they are searchable.
Nina Simon, a consultant on museums and web 2.0, advises organisations taking their first steps towards social media to start by searching review sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor or Qype to see what people are saying about the institution.
“If reviews include incorrect information, add your own comment giving helpful information. If there are negative comments you want to address, commiserate, be friendly, and help them know that you care,” she says.
You can do the same for blogs, again commenting where appropriate. This is a good and simple starting point to familiarise yourself with the web 2.0 environment and is also a type of “soft” marketing.
TWITTER YE NOT?
The biggest social networking story of the day, Twitter, is perhaps the hardest to pin down from a marketing point of view. Some museums are using Twitter to post regular updates on exhibitions and events, as well as converse with the public. Its 140-character “tweet” limit is ideal for quick updates and short question-and-answer conversations.
However, it is informal by nature and the “voice” of a museum’s Twitter contact is typically individual, not corporate. This is a good thing perhaps, but it does have brand and public relations implications.
“Twitter could be the hardest social media platform to take your brand into because it is a person-to-person platform,” says Jim Richardson, managing director of branding consultancy Sumo.
“You need to have an individual [twittering for your organisation] who understands what your organisation is about and understands the medium. They need to be perceived as ‘that cool person who Twitters from the museum’, rather than the institution itself.
“But the content that this individual tweets can be based on your brand. If I’m tweeting for an art gallery wishing to inspire people to engage with art, this forms the basis of all my activity on the site, not just about my own exhibitions, but about other inspiring things.”
Richardson does not recommend Twitter as a public relations vehicle per se, but rather as a way to engage audiences “with interesting conversations”.
Having said that, Twitter is a great mechanism for quick updates, along the lines of “still seats left for tonight’s screening” or “6-9pm tonight, free bar (while stocks last)”, which were recent tweets by the Museum of Childhood in London to promote its First Thursdays events: direct marketing in anybody’s book.
Facebook is perhaps easier to approach in a straightforward marketing sense because it has a section for event details - and, unlike Twitter information, it is not limited to 140-character updates.
Facebook users can become “fans” of their favourite institutions and they do - in droves. The Design Museum, London, boasts of its 46,000 fans, the Tate has almost 12,000, and the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), London, more than 10,000.
MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS
So what does everyone get from this “relationship”? “We keep them updated with news, information about exhibitions and events, and we run competitions and special offers,” says Mark Hook, the web content manager at the V&A.
“The benefit to the online audience is that they always know what is going on at the museum and they are able to enter discussions with us about areas of particular interest. The benefit to the museum is that it is a chance to get feedback from people who are engaged with what we do and it is also an opportunity to reach new audiences,” he says.
Social media are great at getting the message out and reaching new audiences but the feedback is trickier to handle. So marketing in web 2.0 is marketing, but not quite as we know it.
This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Autumn 2009.
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September 9th, 2009
Sites and services such as YouTube, Flickr, iTunes and Wordpress can provide useful platforms for sharing your work and events
THIRD-PARTY SITES
One of the most significant aspects of the move to web 2.0 technologies and social media is just how much online content is now delivered to the reader not directly from the source, but through third-party websites or software.
Photos are viewed on Flickr, videos on YouTube, blogs on hosting sites such as Wordpress and Blogger. Designed to get people using their systems, these services are simple, largely free and robustly developed.
As well as hosting content, these services are specifically designed so users can share and comment on this material. In many ways, they are an ideal option for museums, few of which can afford to build complex and media-rich websites to host and manage their own content.
When used cleverly, such services can support museum activities extremely effectively. Used poorly, they could become a dumping ground for largely irrelevant media. There are other issues to consider too: media on a third-party site sits within that site’s branding, not your own. And if the site becomes unpopular - or worse, goes bust - it may be difficult to migrate your content to a different system.
These are two main reasons why, given sufficient resources, it may be worth developing a proprietary content management and publishing system for multimedia content to use alongside third party sites.
Of course, the appeal of third-party systems is that all this expensive and time-consuming back-end development is already taken care of; all you really need is good content and a reason to publish it - the rest is easy.
POST HASTE
Posting images to Flickr should take less than an hour if you are already generating photographic content.
“You can post images from museum events on Flickr or upload event videos to YouTube easily,” says Nina Simon, a web 2.0 consultant.
“The time required is highly correlated to whether you are currently generating this kind of content. But if you are already snapping shots, putting them up on the web - with a handy link back to the museum website - is a cinch, and it’s totally acceptable to do it sporadically.”
It is debatable just how interesting pictures of people mingling at an event are to the wider public, but it is an easy way to kick off an online presence. National Museums Liverpool is using this snapshot approach through Flickr to chronicle construction of the new Museum of Liverpool on the city’s waterfront, for example.
The Tate, London Transport Museum and National Maritime Museum (NMM) have all used Flickr to run competitions, with user-contributed photos feeding into content for accompanying exhibitions and books.
In July 2008 the London Transport Museum’s Flickr Scavenger Hunt sent five teams of visitors on a trail of “cryptic clues” to locate and photograph nearby transport-related features in the Covent Garden area, in central London. All the photos were uploaded to Flickr - and ultimately to social networking site Webjam - where the winners were chosen by public vote.
“You need to be well organised to run a Flickr scavenger hunt and think creatively to come up with clues, but events are fairly low-cost and the more you do the easier it becomes,” says Jane Findlay, a community curator at the London Transport Museum.
“Running a public vote is also a great way of prolonging the life of the event. As well as the competition on the day we had a week-long vote for the best photograph.
“It’s been a good way of developing a new web 2.0 community audience and building a media relationship with bloggers. It’s also changed museum interpretation practices by inspiring the use of user-generated content in all future exhibitions.”
The Tate joined forces with Flickr and book-publishing site Blurb as part of its Street & Studio photography exhibition, to add a public element to the show, which was held in 2008. Participants could add two of their own street- or studio-based photographic portraits to a Flickr site, for example (see link below).
“We use Flickr to run audience-participation projects,” says John Stack, the head of Tate Online. “Our approach has always been to ask people to contribute but then to offer something back: displays in the gallery, or a book of selected photographs [for example].”
USING YOUTUBE AND ITUNES
Flickr is the easiest and most used of the third-party media-hosting sites, but some museums are also making use of YouTube and iTunes. If you are already producing video and audio material in-house, these services are especially useful for broadcasting that content.
Tate publishes its video podcast series TateShots on YouTube, and iTunes and is now producing a small amount of content specifically for YouTube. Audio and film recordings of Tate public events are available through iTunes, as are some exhibition audio and multimedia tours, which can be downloaded to iPhones or iPods prior to a visit to the gallery.
Even if you are already producing multimedia material in-house, deploying it to third-party sites will take some additional resources, especially when you plan to update it at least once a month, as the Tate does.
“Mostly we are reusing content from elsewhere or redeploying it,” says Jane Burton, the head of content and creative director of Tate Media.
“Generally it needs to be recontextualised for the medium, and that’s time-consuming. There is a change in what people do as part of their jobs and inevitably working with social media is additional, rather than replacing existing channels, such as email communications, press releases and Tate Online. There is some staff time involved in uploading and maintaining play lists and responding to comments, for example.”
Given the extra time needed to “populate” third-party sites with content, it is reasonable to assess what the benefits might be. According to Burton, Tate measures the number of referrals from these sites back to the main Tate Online website and has found the results encouraging enough to adopt this approach in all of the gallery’s activities.
“In general, we have found that reaching out to communities on other sites is very successful and we are working on a cross-departmental strategy to embed this within the organisation including Tate Online, marketing, press and communications, visitor services, director’s office, membership, and beyond,” she says.
This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Autumn 2009.
Posted in Digital, Exhibition, Interaction, Museums | No Comments »
September 9th, 2009
Web 2.0 services, such as social networking sites, allow museums to become truly collaborative and democratic
PUBLIC INTERACTION
Web 2.0 is all about interconnections. It can develop the connections between museums and their users, as well as those between the users themselves, but there are also connections between objects - and not necessarily objects held in the same museum.
And it is this last set of connections that can really be harnessed by the interoperability of web 2.0 services and collaboration with the public.
The digitisation of objects and information to create online collections is not new, even though for many institutions it is a slow and ongoing process. But the way that people, including other organisations, might make use of these collections is now changing.
Web 2.0 services such as Flickr and Facebook allow content to be added and manipulated from other pieces of software through what is known as an application programming interface (API).
It is here that some of the most interesting developments will take place, says Mike Ellis, the former head of web for the National Museum of Science and Industry and now a solutions architect at IT group Eduserv.
“[While we focus] heavily on the social aspects of web 2.0 from a user perspective, it is the stuff going on under the hood which really pushes the social web into new and exciting territory. It is the data sharing, the mashing, the APIs and the feeds which are at the heart of this new generation of web tools,” he says.
OPEN SOURCE
A number of museums are building APIs to allow access to their online collections: the Brooklyn Museum in the US and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, are two leading examples. But what does it mean to have an API?
Shelley Bernstein, the chief of technology at Brooklyn Museum, describes it like this: “It’s basically a way outside programmers can query our collections data and create their own applications using it.” In other words, the data in the digital collections becomes open and can be mined and presented in new ways by other web-based applications.
This means that museums can effectively share their digital collections and the public can potentially “collect” information on objects they are interested in, irrespective of which museum holds the real items.
This prompted Beth Harris, the director of digital learning at the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in New York to ask: “Why would a person want a ‘personal collection’ at seven museum websites? Can we really think about our users instead of ourselves?”
This is exactly what the Powerhouse Museum has done with the creation of “D*Hub”, a resource that uses APIs to search a number of design collections held in institutions around the world.
Developing APIs for digital collections obviously requires a dedicated web team, with time to do the coding, even assuming that at least some of the collection has been digitised. But once created, it could lead to a new form of open access that ultimately saves time.
Shelley Bernstein says: “People [in museums] have been working to create various pan-institution collection databases. By releasing our API, Brooklyn Museum data can now be included in these endeavours without requiring more staff time from us - something that would have been impossible prior to the API.”
As well as staff time, there are other considerations, such as material copyright and terms of use, both of which have to be considered under the ethos of sharing and collaboration that such web services promote.
But as museum collections become more readily accessible in different places and formats, opportunities for the public to contribute to the collection increase. One way they can do this is through “tagging”, where brief descriptions are attached to objects online, allowing people to assign their own attributes or knowledge to an item.
Often, the vocabulary of tagging is neither academic nor curatorial, but instead brings a “lay” interpretation to a collection. But increasingly there are instances where the online availability of collections has brought a direct research benefit.
PHOTO LIBRARY
In January 2008, the US Library of Congress launched Flickr Commons as a way to post photographs held in various public collections online. More than a dozen museums, public libraries and other cultural heritage institutions from around the world have now joined, releasing over 12,000 images to be “perused, tagged and researched by the public”.
In many instances, public users of Flickr have provided, or sometimes corrected, information relating to the images in the Commons collection. The Library of Congress itself has already updated almost 200 of its own records based on information provided in this way.
Similarly, unknown scenes in historic photographs posted by the Swedish National Heritage Board were identified by Flickr users within a day.
Both tagging and Flickr Commons lead to the idea of “the crowd as curator”, where members of the public contribute to museum collections and exhibitions alongside curators and historians.
The Brooklyn Museum’s Tag! You’re It game encourages members of its online “posse”community to tag items for the collection, with the aim that their contributions will make the collection easier for others to search.
The Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) put the crowd-as-curator idea into practice two years ago, before social media had really hit the big time. In the build up to Minnesota’s 150 Years of Statehood celebrations in 2008, the historical society invited public submissions of the key people, places or things that have shaped the state’s history (see link below).
This public engagement was partly conducted online, but the bulk of submissions came from community outreach. “This online technique brought us about 300 responses,” says Kate Roberts, senior exhibit developer at MHS.
“We were pleased with the response, but did feel that we were preaching to the converted, since we reached mostly MHS members. Of course, were we to do this process today, we could take advantage of Facebook, Twitter and so on and have a huge reach.”
The MHS programme has been successful partly because of the collaborative development process, says Roberts. “Had we not used this technique, I feel quite sure that the rich blend of stories and objects presented by real people passionate about their nominations could not have been matched.”
Should the public contribute more and more to the process? “We learned many years ago that our visitors understand there is no single way to interpret the past, and they appreciate exhibits and programmes that invite speculation and debate. Public contribution supports this preference in a real and meaningful way.”
So is this the way museum exhibitions are going? Most definitely,” says Roberts. She is not alone in her views.
This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Autumn 2009.
Posted in Digital, Exhibition, Interaction, Museums | No Comments »
September 9th, 2009
Social networking sites present great opportunities for dialogue with visitors. But you have to accept that along with praise will come criticism
BUILDING DIALOGUE
Social media are about interaction. When it works well, this interaction can lead to proper dialogue and the formation of a “relationship” between those involved.
It is this simple underlying appeal that accounts for the huge success of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and the many interconnections of the “blogosphere”. But this apparent simplicity belies a thorny complexity when it comes to museums and heritage organisations interacting online.
Most museums say they want to interact with visitors to build relationships and encourage dialogue, but are they really prepared for the web 2.0 world? Too often they don’t really know why they want to have these conversations or how to handle them when they arise.
“[Museums] don’t have the resources or policies to support real dialogue with the public, even if they are present in social media-land. They may be in Rome, but they’re not ready to do like the locals,” says Nina Simon, a museums and web 2.0 consultant.
EMBRACE THE FUTURE
A handful of museums around the world seem to have changed their culture and philosophy to embrace online social media. The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, the Tate and the National Maritime Museum in the UK, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum and Brooklyn Museum in the US are all pretty advanced in this area.
If you are thinking of using social media sites or museum blogs to interact with the public, a good starting point is to look closely at what these organisations are doing.
At Brooklyn Museum, Shelley Bernstein, the chief of technology, claims that dialogue and interaction are now intrinsic to their work. But have they had to change to achieve this? “The easiest way for me to answer this question is to say we live with technology and these tools differently now,” says Bernstein.
“It’s more about ambient awareness - it’s a fifth of what my job entails here, but it’s always on in the background: nights, weekends and even on vacation. That’s not a bad thing; I encourage institutions to find the people in their organisation who live these platforms much like our audience do. They are going to be the most natural at managing the presence in a way that is very fluid.”
Much of the challenge lies in how a single institution with limited staff and time can effectively communicate with many individuals, some of whom are not complimentary.
Take an example on the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) Facebook page made after a recent event held at the museum. A visitor wrote: “I was so disappointed. What an over-priced, uninspiring exhibition and such half-hearted late-night ‘events’. Do not pay £11 to see the Baroque exhibition, it’s a total rip-off!”
This may be an isolated opinion, but you really have to respond, which the V&A did, albeit in a fairly cursory fashion, by saying it welcomes feedback. Spurred by this, the visitor then offered more specific criticism of the design of the Baroque exhibition, which the museum then failed to respond to, at least publicly.
The V&A has almost 10,000 “fans” on Facebook, so these interactions are significant. As Simon notes, a Facebook group is one of the most time-consuming of the “cheap” options for developing web 2.0 activity, but it can reach a lot of people in a targeted manner.
“If you have staff members who are already using these social networks, you can quickly broadcast out to a large group of people at infrequent points and provide a place for that group to meet and interact with each other,” she says.
Another option for starting interaction and discussion is to host a message board on the museum’s site. The site of the UK Science Museum’s Dana Centre, for example, features a Discuss area where people can talk about science, technology and the environment by setting up their own topic threads. In this sense it is simple and easily maintained.
But according to Maya Mendiratta, programmes developer at the Dana Centre, without regular plugging and content changes on the site’s homepage, participation is pretty low.
“We have discussed ways to increase participation, but they all require web editing and we are really lucky if we get one hour of the [Science Museum] web team’s time a week. So I would advise that if you are setting up a forum, you get as much web-editing experience as possible and set it up so you can do it yourself.”
FAN BASE
One of the most developed programmes of social networking is the Brooklyn Museum’s 1stfans (see link below). As an internet-enabled version of a traditional member scheme, 1stfans links an online community directly to museum events.
Information about exclusive member events is delivered via Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to encourage people to visit and mix in person with museum staff, artists and other 1stfans members.
In fact, the Brooklyn Museum has a Community section on its website, dedicated to all its online interactions. Here, users can leave comments about their visit, join a “posse” and contribute to the museum’s online collection, as well as read blogs and watch videos. By all accounts, the Brooklyn Museum presents one of the most holistic approaches to web 2.0 interaction in the museum sector.
“Brooklyn has a community-driven mission, so for us, reaching out in these types of forums is very natural and makes sense overall,” says Shelley Bernstein.
“It’s less about PR and more about community and outreach, and our participation online in this way is very similar to what our visitor services staff do when people come inside the building or what our community manager does when she reaches out to the local communities.”
Whatever your reasons for engaging in social media, remember that some form of dialogue will follow, and the way this is handled will affect a visitor’s relationship with the museum.
Perhaps the most important thing is to have an awareness of potential stumbling blocks before heading online “socially”. Be clear at the outset what kind of dialogue or relationships you want and focus on that dynamic, not the technologies or platforms.
This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Autumn 2009.
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August 10th, 2009
A young woman is strolling down the street in a medium-sized British town. Rounding a corner she is confronted with an altercation between a white man and an Asian store-owner. It is not clear what has caused the confrontation, but the aggression has a palpable racial element. As the shouting and gesticulating heightens, the observer takes out her phone and grabs a couple of photographs, as well as a short, ten-second video, all the while making sure she is out of sight.
Later, as she comes into the city centre, the woman decides to pop in to the local museum to see what’s on and to pass half an hour before a meeting. As it turns out, the museum has just opened a temporary exhibition looking at the history of race relations in the city, offering oral histories, photographs and cultural objects imported to the town by its Asian immigrants. She notices that one section of the exhibition is soliciting visitor input, encouraging people to share their own stories, experiences and images. These contributions will be collected on a special microsite, built to accompany the exhibition, elements of which form part of a constantly updated digital display inside the museum.
Recalling the incident she witnessed in the street, the woman decides to upload the pictures to the museum’s Flickr group, set up especially for the exhibition, where she is able to geotag the exact location of the event using Google maps, as well as the time and date it took place. One of the pictures – a decisive photographic moment – captured the white man’s grimacing face, his first finger rigidly poking towards the anxious looking Asian shopkeeper. Shorn of context, the image could of course have any number of meanings; but the photographer is able to provide a firsthand account of the racist abuse she overheard and which she duly records in the image’s caption.
With this contribution the exhibition has become live and dynamic. The museum has taken a difficult subject, with historical and social dimensions, examined it and opened it to the public for further and ongoing discussion and interpretation. Although focused around the physical exhibition itself, much of this public participation is made possible using online services which are constructed along the social media principles of interconnection, sharing and collaboration – an approach to web-based services encapsulated in the term web 2.0.
But more than this, in planning for the exhibition the museum staff decided to engage people outside the organisation to work through the design process itself. This participatory design sought input from a small number of community groups, local businesses and residents. One of the outcomes of this ‘outside’ contribution was the decision that the microsite, while hosted and branded by the museum, would be maintained and moderated by two volunteers. One of these volunteers works for a community outreach programme which organises events promoting integration and positive interaction between different sections of the community. The experiences and learning derived from these events continues to be fed into the microsite in the form of a blog.
And so on. This fictional scenario, presenting a museum operating on the tricky frontiers of social debate, begins to illustrate some of the possibilities of incorporating participation – by design – into the processes of creating exhibitions, as well as the way those exhibitions engage the public. Of course, engagement and collaboration may well form the backbone of many existing museum programmes without the term participatory design (or indeed design for participation) ever being mentioned. But a conscious decision to build participation into the design process itself and/or into the way users will interact with exhibitions once they are installed is an approach which may yield benefits for the institution and visitors alike.
Nina Simon of US consultancy Museum 2.0 explains: ‘Participatory design can help museums deliver on the oft-repeated but rarely demonstrated desire for museums to become essential civic spaces, social environments that encourage the democratic process.’
Participation can be as complicated or as simple as deemed necessary, depending on resources, experience and objectives. Engaging and organising people (the public, experts from areas outside the museum, community groups and so on) to take part in a truly collaborative design process is certainly an undertaking, as is inviting visitor contributions and dialogue with the exhibitions themselves. But at its simplest level, participation might be encouraged by asking visitors to caption or comment on objects by sticking Post-It notes around exhibition displays. An example cited by Simon is The Post-It Project, conducted at Sweden’s Västernorrlands Läns Museum a few years ago, ‘in which visitors were solicited to write down comments – about anything in the museum – and post them wherever they wanted.’ As she suggests, the value and goal here are perhaps too vague to be genuinely useful, but the ‘open-endedness also makes this kind of project a great starting point for a museum to explore the inclusion of visitor content. Start-up costs and development time are minimal, and the project can be aborted at any time.’
But for many museums, the catalyst for building visitor contributions into their activities has been the proliferation and mass uptake of online social media services – sites such as Flickr, Facebook and, more recently, Twitter. Flickr in particular is well known, easy to use and allows museums to garner relevant photographic material from the public, not just locally, but anywhere in the world. An event-based extension of this might be to organise a scavenger hunt, as the London Transport Museum has done, sending teams of people into the city to locate and photograph various London Transport related objects. All the pictures were uploaded to Flickr, allowing a vote for the best image to be thrown open to the public and in turn utilising Flickr’s social network aspects to build awareness of the museum’s brand amongst online ‘communities’.
Similarly, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s World Beach Project, devised by artist Sue Lawty, asks people worldwide to create sculptures and images on beaches using gathered stones, recording the process and finished art in up to three photographs. Rather than using Flickr, the images are uploaded to the museum’s dedicated web page and embedded Google world map. Again, the project is conceived specifically to create participation, engaging visitors and non-visitors alike in content generation, while marketing the V&A online at the same time.
These last two examples are competition and art project respectively, so arguably outside a museum’s core public-facing activities, which are delivered via exhibitions, collections and interpretation. But participation can seed exhibitions too. The Minnesota History Society’s MN150 exhibition and book invited public submissions of the key people, places or things that have shaped the state’s history. This engagement was partly conducted online, but the bulk of submissions came from community outreach, demonstrating that participatory design need not be technology-led – it is mostly about approach and intent. The result was an exhibition populated with content gathered directly through public input, albeit curated by the museum.
A nice example of design for participation is the National Maritime Museum’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, set up this year so that entries are submitted via Flickr, where they are held in the public domain, while a partnership with Astrometry.net allows each image is ‘astrotagged’ so that they can all be combined and compared in a growing photographic chart of the night sky. The collaborative nature of this project – along with the content created by the public – is its strength. And again, it builds awareness of the museum’s activities farther and wider than could have been achieved otherwise. It is competition, exhibition, research and marketing all in one, but would not be possible without public input, professional collaboration and web-based services.
Yet another example is Brooklyn Museum’s Click! exhibition, an investigation of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ in which artists’ photographic responses to the theme of the ‘changing faces of Brooklyn’ were assessed by the public online. At the final exhibition, held in the museum last summer, the artworks were installed according to their relative ranking from this public jury process.
Participatory design, then, can take many flavours. Naturally, not everything will be appropriate for every institution, exhibition or subject theme.
Traditionally, museums have delivered knowledge and learning in one direction: from institution to the public. Although it adds another dimension, participation need not supplant this model. Of course, it is valid to ask whether participation – and by extension participatory design – is actually necessary or beneficial at all. Perhaps one way to answer that is to consider changing expectations. As cultural sector consultant and Flow Associates director Bridget McKenzie notes, a recent flurry of events centred on participatory culture seem to indicate that ‘the public expects to participate’.
This article was written for the MuseumNext conference, taking place 22-23 October 2009.
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July 9th, 2009
In the wider world, beyond consumer products and services, one of the most remarkable events of the past 12 months was the successful election campaign and inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the US.
It was remarkable not only historically and politically, but also in terms of marketing, for Obama’s campaign communications and branding have been hailed in design circles and beyond as consistently slick and well-executed.
Street artist Shepard Fairey’s screen-printed ‘Hope’ poster swiftly became its defining image (and an iconic piece of graphic design in itself), but the Obama brand was much more than just a poster. The campaign also embodied a shift in sentiment, important not only to politics, but also in how brands talk to consumers - toward trust, honesty and authenticity.
With malfeasance seemingly rife among politicians and bankers playing fast and loose with other people’s money, public trust has become the scarcest of commodities when it comes to big business.
The design industry is subject to the effect of this in several ways. Design is often the only direct touchpoint between brands and consumers, making an understanding of the mood and sentiment of the day crucial for consultancies advising their clients. At the same time, when companies cut marketing budgets and put projects on hold, agency margins are squeezed.
There is no denying it has been a tough year so far, but the picture for design agencies appears to be mixed: some agency heads are describing conditions as ‘the worst they have been for a long time’, while others are enjoying record business wins as clients shop around for the right partner.
According to Doug James, director at brand consultancy Honey, design agencies need more business acumen to remain profitable and successful. ‘It’s about setting a business up, knowing all the metrics and which ones to watch - the key performance indicators. You need to know where it is you make money,’ he says.
Sara Fielding, senior consultant at consulting firm Results International, agrees that this is a primary concern. ‘There has to be greater clarity and understanding of finances, especially net profitability, not just for the business as a whole, but by client and by service offering,’ she says. ‘Only with these systems in place can they really see where the money is being made and be able to argue factually and convincingly for fairer fees.’
In a recession, the pressure on business metrics is unparalleled, but there are  opportunities as well as challenges in the market, according to Iain Johnston, chief executive of marketing services group Loewy. ‘There are a few things happening on the client side and on the agency side that are coming together,’ he says. ‘There’s more focus on value for money and effectiveness - on exactly what you are trying to achieve. Things you can’t show a return on are the first to go, but there does seem to be a flow of work coming through.’
Not surprisingly, clients demanding greater effectiveness and value are becom-ing the norm. Skincare brand Nude has an ongoing partnership with design agency Pearlfisher and the two are collaborating to become more efficient.
‘A more challenging economic climate can often encourage innovation; it forces us to look at what we’re doing and how effective and efficient it really is,’ says Annmarie Harris, marketing manager at Nude. ‘Design spend, like everything, needs to be well-managed and monitored for efficacy. For brands in fast-moving industries like the beauty industry, to stop spending would run the risk of quickly becoming outdated or worse, irrelevant. However, well-utilised, innovative design can achieve fantastic awareness and be very cost-effective. My advice would be to keep spending, but do it cleverly,’ she adds.
According to Jackie Roberts, senior brand manager for tampon brand Lil-lets, measuring the effectiveness of design investment is crucial. ‘All activity should pay for itself by driving sales,’ she says. ‘While it is difficult to establish the effectiveness of a pack redesign in isolation, it plays an important role in optimising the results of the broader communications activity.’
Loewy-owned product design group Seymourpowell has worked with Lil-lets on the development of a new applicator product. ‘We have invested heavily in the current market conditions to establish this as a better alternative to the market leader in the category. Ultimately, success is measured through sales, but we have measures in place to track individual elements of our integrated communications plan,’ says Roberts.
That efficacy and value for money are being demanded at all stages is due in large part to the rise of measurable digital channels. The continued decline in spend on (and the impact of) traditional advertising appears to be benefiting design generally and in particular digital and packaging, where the ROI is greater.
While digital is becoming more important in brand communications, this does not mean businesses should turn solely to digital specialists to work on brand development, warns Nicolas Mamier, European vice-president of branding group Elmwood.
‘Digital is an increasingly important route for communication and therefore features high on the list of requirements from any agency, but I do not believe that means companies should default to using digital specialists to manage their brand,’ he says. ‘Clients are looking for original brand thinking that makes use of the opportunities offered by digital channels, tools and platforms, not just digital thinking.’
The shift away from traditional advertising also has implications for a client’s strategic needs, says Jon Davies, managing director of packaging design group Holmes & Marchant.
‘Above the line doesn’t hit as many consumers as it used to, which means the high costs do not see enough ROI,’ he adds. ‘But ad agencies have long been the strategic partner for brands, investing heavily in planning support for their clients, paid for by the high fees. Recession reduces fees available and pushes clients to ensure they get ROI. So this old ad agency model is no longer sustainable and clients are looking elsewhere for strategic partners with more relevant products; namely, design and digital. The more grown-up agencies have invested in planning to support this shift.’
By introducing planning to design agencies, their thinking is not confined to creating standout packaging, for example, but ensures that there is a full marketing and communications strategy underpinning and supporting the design work, claims Davies.
The whole story
Bob Blandford, design creative director at integrated marketing agency Haygarth, believes we will see more of this. ‘There will be even more focus this year on brand planning, strategy and positioning. [It is] key not only to design work, but in informing and directing the wider communications strategy.’ In an echo of Obama’s holistic design and marketing campaign, the strategy may well include a ’story’ that can be promoted through channels such as PR activity, social media and advertising.
One of the most prevalent of these ’stories’ to hit the FMCG packaging world recently is nostalgia. The apparent reassurance to consumers of bygone days and enduring brands has driven a boom in ‘heritage’ design.
‘There has been a growing number of successful marketing initiatives that hark back to, or celebrate, the past,’ says Barry Seal, managing director of branding group Anthem Worldwide. ‘[Examples include] the relaunch of Wispa, Milky Bar Kid advertising and Marks & Spencer and Selfridges’ anniversary celebrations. This is a powerful and effective way to reconnect to the past and bring back the feeling of the “good old days”.’
Another recent branding theme has been that of the ‘local’. Amid a backlash against globalisation and as consumers focus more on their immediate communities, brands are talking up their local ties or knowledge. However, this is not the same as having a strategy, warns Jim Prior, chief executive of branding group The Partners.
‘I don’t think brands should go down the knee-jerk local response, where they say “Look how we’re in touch with the people of Bangalore”, or wherever,’ he says. ‘This is just a reaction and it rings hollow. It’s the time to be assertive and confident about your brand globally, but be aware that the world isn’t a homogenous place.’
The same can be said of nostalgia branding. Brands with heritage by the  truckload, such as Hovis, can capitalise on it. Jones Knowles Ritchie’s pack designs for the bread brand neatly marry its long history with contemporary colourways and clean typography. Nonetheless, it has to be based on something real and authentic, not simply a tactical reaction. ‘That heritage seems an opportune add-on to a brand could be seen as an indictment of the short-termism of the brand manager rather than a celebration of their ability to catch the wave,’ says Smith & Milton director Howard Milton.
Again, it comes back to the attributes of openness and trust. ‘Consumers are seeking honesty and co-operation and design’s role is to communicate this effectively,’ says James. This is changing the way in which brand language is formulated, according to Terry Tyrrell, worldwide chairman of The Brand Union. ‘Amid this landscape of broken promises and brands, people are sceptical and suspicious. Today’s consumer seeks transparency and authenticity, respects candid answers and expects quality,’ he adds.
This leads to another trend in branding programmes: the real need for change to be internal, as well as external. ‘More clients understand that the way to drive their brand forward is as much about internal alignment as external activities. It’s about understanding and buy-in at all levels of the company,’ says Prior. The Partners has been working with global financial consultancy Deloitte on the firm’s brand positioning of ‘leadership and staying ahead’. According to Deloitte UK head of brand Pia DeVitre, the project focuses on the ‘tangible actions’ of the company and its staff. She believes that working on branding is more important than ever in the current market. ‘This recession has made us focus on the things that really matter,’ adds DeVitre. ‘Brand really matters and we still have budgets to support key components of the brand strategy.’
Broader outlook
Such strategic consultancy includes much more than tangible design work. It is those agencies that under-stand their client’s business issues - and are savvy about providing consultancy outside core design work - that are faring well. ‘Clients need something more than just shelf stand-out and pretty design. This could mean consultancy on distribution methods, cost-savings, materials, innovation and so on - whatever helps their business,’ says Davies.
Materials are a key factor in another major trend affecting brands and design - the ongoing drive toward more sustainable processes. Sustainability is now a key factor in most structural design briefs, whether for ethical or PR reasons, or simply to save money by reducing costs. Design can help brands find more sustainable and efficient ways to deliver their products and services. ‘It’s about being smarter,’ says Harris. ‘With Pearlfisher’s guidance and expertise, Nude is in the process of reworking some packaging to better suit our sustainable goals, without destroying our margins.’
According to Johnston, large-scale FMCG brand-owners are ‘taking a major lead on sustainability’, the fruits of which are likely to be seen in the next 12 to 18 months. ‘The focus is on minimisation in general, from packaging and recycling to supply chains and distribution,’ he says. ‘These projects aren’t going on hold because of the recession and they will make a big splash when they are announced.’ However, he declines to name the comp-anies he is referring to.
There is still some way to go before most companies embed sustainable processes into the way they think and operate. Anthem Worldwide’s parent company, Schawk, recently surveyed major US FMCG and retail companies and found that 83% are being affected by packaging sustainability, but only 28% had a comprehensive plan in this area. The survey also revealed that more than 60% of clients look to design and pre-media vendors for up-to-date information on sustainability. ‘Clearly, more needs to be done in terms of shaping both thinking and best practice, so the design industry has a key role to play in educating the marketplace,’ says Seal.
Sustainability is, perhaps, an overarching issue for most brands now, but all clients have different requirements and problems. Some may be solved by traditional market-ing techniques, others by restructuring a business’ processes or even its culture. Design can tackle all of these because
first and foremost the discipline is about problem-solving, and whatever happens to the various marketing channels, businesses will always have problems to solve.
‘One of the great attractions and anomalies of the design sector is that it’s all sorts of different things,’ says Prior. ‘But designers tend to be problem-solvers. The great consultancies think neutrally about what the solution might be. If there’s one unifying theme across design, I think that maybe this is it.’
This article was written for Marketing, 1 July 2009.
Posted in Branding, Design, Digital, Packaging, Product | No Comments »
June 10th, 2009
Mobile phones are ubiquitous. In any busy public place, a large proportion of people is either talking on or fiddling with a phone handset.
And if they are not, there is a high chance they are wearing headphones connected to an iPod or other music player. For many of us, the portable communications-cum-media device is now as familiar as a wristwatch.
It is no surprise, then, that museums and galleries have seen an opportunity to harness our connection with our mobiles and iPods to deliver multimedia content, cheaply and efficiently, to visitors.
The appeal is obvious: practically every visitor carries a mobile phone, most of which can play multimedia files. All the museum has to do is deliver the content; no hardware acquisition and maintenance costs, no staff needed to hire out and recharge guide devices.
Unsurprisingly, mobile phones have been viewed as an “Eldorado” by museums, removing lots of the problems of hiring out equipment such as PDAs (personal digital assistants).
One of those problems is, of course, cost. Setting up and running a PDA-based multimedia guide can prove prohibitively expensive for smaller institutions. Even large museums find the cost too high for exhibitions not intended as blockbusters. Purchasing PDAs, lanyards, charging racks, security tags, cases and so on can run into tens of thousands of pounds pretty quickly.
“It seems that many museums long for a time when they could forego the cost of maintaining their own devices in a constantly evolving hardware environment,” says Peter Samis, who develops interactive educational technologies at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoma).
If visitors used their own mobile phones, on the other hand, they could get museum-generated content at no cost to visitors and relatively cheaply for the museums. In certain set-ups, this promise is achievable.
Inevitably, there is a “but”. The “Eldorado” of visitor-provided hardware has not really emerged in any big way. This is partly to do with technical obstacles and partly due to behavioural resistance from visitors.
Dial up and download
At SFMoma two recent exhibitions included mobile phone-delivered audio tours as part of their interpretation. For 246 & Counting, an exhibition about building a museum collection, an audioguide was available through a dial-up number.
Visitors were given a card showing the audio items available and how they related to the exhibition. To access these clips, the visitors dialled a main number followed by the corresponding item code.
A similar mobile phone guide was set up for The Art of Participation, an exhibition looking at the history of audience interaction in art. This had the additional option of a podcast, with higher-quality audio files that could be downloaded to the phone or music player via the museum’s website at any time before (or after) the visit.
Both systems gave the visitors autonomy to choose what they would like to listen to and both were relatively simple and inexpensive for the museum to deliver. On the downside, dial-up guides require some call payment which, especially for foreign visitors making international calls, could turn out to be more expensive than hiring a traditional audio tour.
And the podcast, while convenient and offering much higher quality audio than the dial-up guide, requires preplanning on the part of the visitor if they want to play the guide during the visit.
Despite these issues, SFMoma expected the guides to appeal to visitors. In reality, they were barely used. Calls to the dial-up guides, in particular, scarcely broke an average of 20 per day - a negligible proportion of the visitors to the exhibition.
Use of the mp3 podcast for The Art of Participation was nine times higher, but that still amounted to relatively few of the exhibition’s visitors.
So why was take-up so poor? The answer, according to the museum’s visitor research, might actually be a general lack of interest in using mobile phones for museum tours.
SFMoma’s experiences show that the convenience and low cost of mobile-delivered content may not yet be enough to engage visitors. “People ask: ‘Do I really want to use a mobile phone in a museum? I’m on it all day’,” says Lindsey Green, head of key accounts at multimedia guide company Antenna Audio. Uncertainty about costs is also an issue.
“In the UK there’s currently no way of making free calls on a mobile and people don’t necessarily understand SMS (short message service) billing or how many free minutes they might have. Across Europe, where many visitors come from other countries, international roaming charges could make something that’s supposed to be cheaper much more expensive. So take-up is low.”
Samis’ assessment of SFMoma’s trials is even more damning: “The majority of visitors solidly prefer a museum-provided device. And who can blame them? Cellphone reception varies, the audio can be poor, and foreign visitors must pay outrageous international roaming charges.
“Barring the aid of a headset, users are asked to hold a device to their ear for extended periods - a physically taxing experience for some. Podcasts, while offering superior sound quality, require pre-visit planning. Finally, wi-fi networks are temperamental, especially in crowded situations.”
The iPod option
When Tate Liverpool organised Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design & Modern Life in Vienna 1900 in 2008, the museum created the UK’s first multimedia guide designed specifically for the iPod Touch and the iPhone. Developed by Tate Media, the guides offer something of a middle ground between asking visitors to use their own phones and hiring equipment.
Visitors to Tate Liverpool could hire a preloaded iPod Touch for £3 or connect to the gallery’s Klimt wi-fi network and view the guide on a wireless device’s web browser. In addition, a podcast of the guide could be downloaded at any time from the Tate’s website. The only snag with this was that the podcast used mp4 files that failed to play correctly on all hardware.
So how did visitors respond? According to Doug McFarlane, the digital production coordinator at Tate Media, iPod loans exceeded 10,000 - about ten per cent of visitors, which is pretty high for a multimedia guide, and the wireless site received 11,000 hits.
“People loved it and we got great feedback. The iPod is light, the screens are great and they are really easy to use, even for an older demographic,” says McFarlane.
As part of SFMoma’s study into visitors’ use of different interpretation systems, Antenna Audio developed a PDA-based multimedia guide for the museum’s exhibition Frida Kahlo in 2008. This allowed users to “tap” on the PDA screen to reveal audio information about a particular area of a painting.
Unlike the mobile phone content, this “touch-and-listen” feature proved a resounding success, where tapping the screen effectively became equivalent to pointing at the work and asking a question.
“One of the ways a multimedia tour can improve on traditional audio tours is to be less long-winded and more specific, responding to the visitor’s increments of curiosity,” says Samis.
It is these “increments of curiosity” that are being harnessed by UK company Hypertag in its guide system, which uses visitors’ mobile phones. With Hypertag’s Mentor product, users download a special Java-based application directly to their phone, for free, through a Bluetooth point in the museum. This enables the phone to receive content via Bluetooth from small devices located next to objects in the exhibition.
The tags have a range of around two to four metres and are wired to a power source (although they can run on batteries for a short time). If the building has a wireless network, content on the tags can be updated remotely and the museum can also gather information about visitor usage.
The usual barrier to this type of system is the huge variation in the capabilities of different phone handsets, according to Jonathan Morgan, the managing director of Hypertag. The company overcomes this through a database of handset models, and content that is tailored to each model.
A visitor who is interested in the object they are viewing can use their Bluetooth-enabled phone to download the content from the tag to watch or listen there and then, or save it for after the visit. There are no phone calls involved, no wi-fi networks and there is no need to prepare for the visit in advance.
Using devices outside
So far the historic houses and museums that have worked with Hypertag, such as Down House, Charles Darwin’s home in Kent, and the Royal Institution in London, have opted for lending PDAs to visitors, however.
The Derbyshire Dales National Nature Reserve, Lathkill Dale, is pioneering the first Bluetooth wildlife guide in the UK, with tags placed outdoors. Visitors can download information about species of flowers and butterflies and a historic quarry.
But what of the assertion that people already spend enough time on their mobiles? Is it possible to create a guide where the user is not always looking at the screen? “It’s about getting the implementation right,” says Morgan. “The experience is accretive - when people see something they are interested in, they want to find out more about what they are seeing.”
One of the benefits of mobile phones that arguably remains relatively untapped by museums is that they allow users to record their own interpretation. In an era of audience participation and a lessening of top-down didacticism, this self-generated interpretation might well appeal to democratic-minded museum educators and curators. And it is this aspect of the hardware that has been put to use by Ookl, a mobile-based learning system developed by design consultancy The Sea.
The National Maritime Museum (NMM) in London installed Ookl in its Atlantic Worlds gallery last September for use with school groups studying transatlantic slavery. Pairs of pupils are given a phone and objects in the gallery are marked with a code which, when entered into the phone, “collects” that object and offers additional information or raises a related question.
The pupils then have to answer this either by further examination of the object or investigation of the rest of the gallery. In other words, the phone causes them to look up as well as down.
“We were worried that kids would spend the whole 45-minute slot looking at their phones, but that hasn’t happened,” says Charlie Keitch, a formal learning officer at NMM.
As well as delivering information and asking questions, the phones let the students take photographs, write notes and make films, just like any other mobile phone. The difference is that all this material, along with the “collected” objects, is automatically uploaded to a personalised web page, for post-visit use back at the school.
“It’s a data-gathering device to help you answer questions, but it also tells you which other people have collected the same object. This hugely increases conversations about the objects, which was one of the things we wanted to do,” says Natasha Waterson, the digital project manager at NMM.
An Ookl licence gives museums standard Nokia phones preloaded with proprietary software and a 3G phone contract, allowing the phones to connect to the company’s website. Calling functions are disabled, but your museum or site will need a good signal to the phone network, or wireless internet access.
A licence for 32 handsets costs just over £10,000 per year. “This allows you to pilot with minimal risk, as you haven’t got to make your own hardware investment and the back-end development has already been done,” Waterson says.
Clearly, school groups have different requirements to the average family. Nonetheless, the NMM system shows how standard mobile phone functions can stimulate investigation and interpretation. And both Ookl and Hypertag compile information to use post-visit as you go - something that traditional guides do not.
While it is this combination of content and experience that is more important than the hardware, the mobile phone, however ubiquitous and smart, brings with it drawbacks as well as advantages.
If loaned equipment loaded with bespoke software continues to provide the richest, most compelling way of viewing information, visitors may favour that over using their own phone, even if it means spending a little more money all round.
This article was written for Museum Practice, Summer 2009.
Posted in Exhibition, Interaction, Museums | 3 Comments »
June 9th, 2009
So asks Museum-ID… Here is a quick response to this question.
The appeal of museums for me is not so much that they hold objects collected and conserved over time, but rather that these objects point to external ideas, subjects or concepts. The objects prompt these subjects to be structured and studied - through curating and exhibiting - and then support the exploration of the subject with tangible evidence. The fact of the existence of the object in the case is almost always secondary to what it represents, for me at least.
One of the difficulties in exhibition design lies in balancing the desire for rich, detailed information (such as you might get in a study book) on the one hand and the need to offer an entertaining and open experience that will appeal to a wide range of audiences on the other. Add to this the practical and conceptual limitations of exhibiting objects from a museum’s store and the final space often lacks a full and satisfying coherence.
I have been musing for a while about the possibility of a Museum of Grand Ideas, or something similar, which would pick a theme every year or two, research it, build a narrative and an educational structure and ‘write’ the exhibition in an arresting and entertaining way. Then, loan applications willing, objects could be hand picked to bring these exhibitions to life. If the ‘Grand Idea’ were gravity, in would go Newton’s and Einstein’s notebooks, a Copernican orrery and so on. If the ‘Grand Idea’ were ‘The Nation State’ objects and media could show how notions of boundaries, territory and national identity have changed through history - a history lesson with great objects basically, but where the objects are tailored to the pre-written story, not the other way around.
As a writer with an interest in education, this focus on ideas, subjects and concepts and how they are presented - in other words, how it is written - really appeals. The objects provide the magic, but the story is great to start with and that’s where you start, as Steph Mastoris at the National Waterfront Museum says.
Sadly, I suspect the Museum of Grand Ideas may not be practical and would be rather too costly without a wealthy and generous benefactor. Although the opportunities for co-branding and marketing for all the institutions which lend to any given exhibition might be quite nice.
Posted in Design, Museums, Opinion | 2 Comments »
June 4th, 2009
It’s hard to imagine just how many tests, adjustments, tweaks and overhauls consumer electronics might undergo before they end up in our hands and homes. Every button, function and finish will be considered and reconsidered, just as shape, size and form may go through numerous iterations. Mass-produced consumer products in particular are objects of huge investment and getting it right before the factory line rolls is imperative. In fact, research and development stages are arguably more critical to a product’s success than the persuasive marketing and advertising that will follow: if people don’t like it, or don’t like using it, they ain’t gonna buy it.
Part and parcel of this process is prototyping. From rough, colourless scale models through to facsimiles of the final article, prototypes aid designers, clients and consumers in ensuring everything is on track. Mark Delaney, director of design at Nokia’s mass-market division Connect, says that prototyping is ‘absolutely core’ to the way that the company’s phone handsets are developed. ‘Designs come out of your head and on to the sketch sheet, move rapidly to CAD - which is “real” and responds to the internal components you’re working with - and then straight after that we’re looking at a wax model in 3D. Literally from day one, models will be appearing,’ he says.
Prototypes for Nokia’s recent 6303 handset, for example, include an initial and basic form proposal 3D ‘print’, moving on to an aluminium
model that demonstrates the weight and material feel of the product. ‘Grey’ models then experiment with visual details and proportional differences created by the arrangement of internal components and finally a full appearance model is produced as part of a larger colour and materials study.
Similarly, when motion-capture hardware company Vicon wanted to refresh its image in the professional marketplace, design consultancy PDD used prototypes to develop a cleaner minimal aesthetic for its T-Series cameras. ‘They wanted to rebrand the products alongside the company and the visual aspects of the cameras were part of this,’ says PDD senior design consultant Oliver Stokes. Initial foam prototypes showed the camera’s form and scale, while sprayed foam models explored split-lines and colours.
As well as helping designers to judge things like scale, form and tolerances, prototypes are also regularly used in consumer testing, as LG Electronics head of design Europe Luke Miles explains. ‘Initiating dialogue with consumers is a useful way to gain feedback on general concepts and enables designers to make adjustments in the early stages,’ he says. ‘Initial “white” models can be printed with an extremely quick turnaround and are used to help analyse proportion and ergonomics, while milled models at the second stage [provide] more detail, specifically the build culture and its effect on the prototype’s external appearance. These models are often tested with consumers to get a clearer analysis on form, colour and materiality.’
There are many different ways to produce a prototype model, so it is crucial that the right approach is chosen, says Mark Hester, senior consultant in design development at PDD. ‘It’s very important to tie in research with design and prototyping, so we work with our research department to find out what kinds of prototype are best for different situations. For example, if you’re consumer-validating the finish of a material, it can be distracting if the form and size are not quite right. In consumer electronics especially, the limitations of a prototype or model shouldn’t be allowed to affect the outcome of research,’ he says.
According to Stokes, using prototypes to test ideas with consumers can increase the chances of market success and cut costs by weeding out poor designs at the early stages. However, consumer electronics design is often concerned with breaking new territory, and innovation through novel forms, materials and interfaces is something we’ve come to expect. Yet consumer testing is not known for generating mould-breaking ideas; quite the contrary. What, then, is the danger of death by focus group?
‘With new products and features you can often get quite negative responses from testers, simply because they are new,’ says Delaney. ‘We really have to unpick why people are saying “no” to something in prototype and we’ll do this in quite a lot of detail, looking at their world view, tastes, background and so on.’
If you want to shake up the market, standard consumer tests should be avoided. Patrick Hunt, director at product design group Therefore, believes that so-called ‘disruptive’ products - much sought after by consumer electronics brands - call for a new approach to consumer testing altogether. ‘Generally, our clients do much less concept testing directly with customers today than, say, five years ago. Top-tier brands have their own product vision and a desire to get new products to market quickly and it’s long been known among designers that consumer research can mean driving forward while looking in the rear view. The type of research where developers test prototypes on consumers behind a oneway mirror is declining in technology-driven products [because] paradigm-breaking products do not survive this process.’
This article was written for Design Week’s Prototyping & Modelling Supplement, 2009.
Posted in Branding, Design, Product | No Comments »
June 4th, 2009
Like most channels of popular culture, graphic design is a scavenger of ideas and material. The visual landscape is crammed full of references pointing in all sorts of directions, often simultaneously.
The same thing happens in pop music, perhaps the ultimate forager of styles. Building on the widespread use of sampling in the 1980s, the borrowing and stealing of material has reached a new level over the past few years with the emergence of mash-ups - a technique in which whole elements of songs are combined and overlaid to create a new, composite track.
Design and music are kith and kin, of course, so it’s no surprise that an analogous trend has bubbled up in graphics, fuelled by the viral interactions of the Internet. A series of design mash-ups has seen the style of one medium combined or overlaid with content from somewhere else. Imagine a film or record title reconceived as a vintage book cover.
It all seems to have started in January, when freelance graphic designer Olly Moss created a Flickr group called Make Something Cool Everyday. On here, Moss posted his designs for classic videogame titles, restyled as if drawn by Saul Bass for 1960s Penguin. Translating each game’s core element into a single graphic illustration, Moss produced a series of six ‘covers’ for titles including Half- Life, Metal Gear Solid and Grand Theft Auto IV. ‘I went to a Design Museum exhibition which showed some Penguin book designs and thought I’d like to do something with that,’ says Moss. ‘Video games often have this fairly naff design behind them, so I decided to appropriate the great design history of Penguin, but also to rethink the graphic, to come up with a neat way of capturing the game.’
Earlier reworkings of film posters by Moss had already inspired Ohio-based freelance designer Mitch Ansara (aka Spacesick) to create his I Can Read Movies series. Again influenced by Bass, as well as Paul Rand, Ansara posted his ‘vintage movie books’ - one per day - to the same Flickr group. With similar two-colour graphic interpretations of films including Highlander and Face/Off, his book covers sit neatly alongside Moss’s ‘Penguin’ video games.
‘In January, I made a 1960s-style Space Jam book cover as a oneoff joke. But I thought it was a lot of fun, and people seemed to like it, so I continued. Fast-forward a month or so and all kinds of talented folks were doing vintage book covers of all kinds of things: video games, music albums, other books, vintage album covers for movies, vintage breakfast cereal boxes for albums - you name it,’ says Ansara.
The idea of distilling a title into a graphic icon is taken a step further in the Modernist Editions, a series of album-covers-as-pictograms created by Heath Killen, director of Australian design group Illumination Ink. As a reflection on the future of album art, Killen’s approach is not a mash-up and avoids appropriation. ‘Everyday signage is a big inspiration and pictograms in general - everything from road signs to dingbats. But I’m not really interested in pastiche and I like to think that these designs stand up without a reference point,’ he says.
Back in the UK, Littlepixel Design director Huw Gwilliam turned directly to pastiche after seeing Ansara’s I Can Read Movies series. His mash-ups of classic album covers imitate an offset, two- or threecolour print process to reference classic Pelican books, where the original album artwork is overlaid on a dog-eared jacket. ‘I spent a lot of time getting the typography right - a special form of Akzidenz Grotesk - and tried to make it look like it was photoset and distressed,’ he says.
As the meme spread, many similar ‘reimaginings’ have followed, some more accomplished than others. But for Moss the trend has more or less run its course. ‘I feel it would be derivative to work on it any more,’ he says. Nonetheless, just as music evolves through remixing and sampling, other designers will no doubt continue to take from the takers, scavenging, adding and reinventing all the way.
This article was written for Design Week, 28 May 2009.
Posted in Design, Graphics, Typography | No Comments »