OUTLINE

1.  Presenting the National Museum of Denmark

2.   Presenting “Europe Meets the World”

3.   Presenting “Visitors voice”

4.   What went wrong?   The product   The process   The concept

5.   An integrated participatory element

6.   Our most successful participatory element

7.  What have we learned

2. THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF DENMARK

Placed in city center of Copenhagen and home to six permanent exhibitions

ABOUT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF DENMARK The National Museum consists of 6 Museums placed all over Denmark - The open air museum in Lyngby

-  The Resistance Museum

-  The Museum of Industrial History at Brede Works

-  The Danish Music Museum

-  The Frøslev Camps in the south of Denmark

-  The royal tombs in Jelling

The museum is also responsible for collecting and preserving the Danish Cultural heritage The six museums had 1,033,071 visitors last year

3. EUROPE MEETS THE WORLD

A temporary exhibition that ran for 7 months in 2012

-  Coinciding with the Danish chairmanship of the EU

-  Focusing on the meetings between European civilization

and the rest of the world throughout history from

ancient Greece to the present.

Quite a success when it came to publicity and number of visitors

A successful collaboration between departments in the

museum

THE EXHIBITION DESIGN

3. VISITORS VOICE

-  A digital survey posing five questions related to the themes of the

exhibition.

-  In order to participate, visitors had to scan QR-codes which took them to specially designed mobile websites.

-  The answers to the five questions could be seen on a small screen when leaving the exhibition.

 

THE FIVE QUESTIONS

HOW MANY PARTICIPATED?

AND THE REST OF THE NUMBERS…

Human Rights 398

Prejudices 361

Borders 323

Religion 479

WHAT WENT WRONG?

•  The product

•  The process

•  The concept

USER EXPERIENCE

This is how the screen was presented in your mobile browser:

USER EXPERIENCE 2

Does this design make sense to you?

LACK OF VISIBILITY AND QR-CODE OVERLOAD

People’s attention was not drawn to the survey until they left the exhibition.

There were three different kinds of QR codes in the exhibitions

-  Several codes led to texts or sound bites used for an educational program for schools

-  Some lead to videos where a curator would tell the story of an artifact

-  Five codes lead to the survey

There was not sufficient light in the cubicles to actually scan all the codes

THE PROCESS •  An add-on to the exhibition rather than an integrated part of the exhibition

•  Form over content

•  So ein ding….

•  Nobody was responsible for the project

•  There was not enough time to test the product and correct flaws

•  Nobody had any knowledge of interaction design

THE CONCEPT

The real problem was:

We started with how instead of why

We should have asked ourselves:

•  Is it an integrated part of the exhibition? (NO)

•  Does this interaction make sense to the visitor (NO)

•  Why should visitors bother to take part in this survey? What is in it for them? (Absolutely nothing)

A DIFFERENT SURVEY

Should we exhibit scalps?

ONE SIMPLE QUESTION

The box was intriguing

An integrated part of the

exhibition

Only one QR code leading to one

question

About 1000 answers

A SUCCESSFUL PARTICIPATORY ELEMENT

Our most successful participatory element last year:

Write a message to the

handball players and put it on the

board

Post-it and pens

A sense of purpose

Over 1600 greetings

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED To start early and appoint a project leader That a participatory element should be an integrated part of the exhibition That we should put ourselves in the place of our users; •  Does our interaction have a purpose •  Does it make sense to visitors

To start at why rather than how!

THANK YOU!

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