Brief: Devise a sensory, embodied experience of V&A's online collection.
Teammates: Ines Yin, Sanya Nayar, Sylvester Liu
Context
In this Unit, UX designers started to work with external partners for a 7-week long project, called Macro UX, which encouraged us to observe widely and think systemically. Our group was fortunate to get the chance to cooperate with Victoria and Albert Museum.
The project started with a presentation from Jack Craig, who is a digital design leader from V&A, he introduced the overview of the V&A collection, and the opportunities and challenges to represent them online.
Our big group conducted research individually at first and then based on the findings and potential directions slipped into 2 small groups. Below I have summarized the research methods applied by myself and our subgroup members.
01. Data Visualization
In order to find out who our users are, how they use the V&A’s online collections, and what their needs are, we started our research with a literature review. After reading the book edited by Brendan Cormier(2017) and reports from the V&A design team(2019) I have sorted out the following points visualized them.
Nearly 40% of Users visit for reasons of personal interest.
Less than a quarter of users actually search the site during their visit.
Almost two-thirds of visits to Search the Collections were from people outside the UK.
02. Case Studies
We also studied other interesting examples of museums and exhibitions which we analysed the pros and cons to be able to better utilize their techniques, mindsets.
SCIENCE MUSEUM: 'Games and Apps' enhancing 'pre-visit and 'post-visit.
TATE: 'Create Like An Artist' teaching skills related to collections.
HENAN MUSEUM: 'Blind Boxes' let visitors experience archaeological digs.
WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD: 'An exhibition about ASMR' intended to explore the relationship between the physical world and immaterial content.
03. Directed Storytelling
After that, We interviewed our friends (over 7 people) from different backgrounds to share their museum experiences, the main findings are people usually visit online museums along and they don't see the necessity to communicate during the visit; for the intention of online visiting, people were enjoying general learning rather than searching for some particular exhibits.
Made by team
Outcomes of My Research
Through research, I have found that people expect more than just virtual realisation when visiting museums online, they need an educational and immediate online learning experience. The online environment affords more narrative contexts and reflective spaces, but prevents the interactions between visitors and exhibits, visitors and visitors. I was thinking about the distinction between online visit and on-site visit, for instance in a physical museum we can't touch objects or leave comments, but modern technology has the potential to provide online visitors with these possibilities. Thus, I came up with the ideas of using ASMR to simulate the tactile sensations of different textures, online cafes to create “incidental time” with others, and so on.
Idea Category
Many exciting ideas were raised during the group discussion, Ines and I then filtered and categorised them according to the five questions posed by Jack.
Made by team
Presentation & Feedback
18 February, our 2 subgroups presented our research outcomes and initial ideas, as well as discussed further with Jack about the aspects of technology, prototype and communication.
People suggested we do wider research rather than limited by the 5 categories and encouraged us to do some real interactive experiments to discover more wired possibilities.
The first 2 weeks went by fast and fun, we did desk research from individuals to the group, by applying methods we learnt from previous practices. It's a pity we didn't get a chance to visit the V&A museum on-site, however, it was also an opportunity to force us to rethink the pros and cons in an online environment. Semi-free grouping mode also gave us an in-front try of the teamwork situations we might encounter in future works. In the end, we have split into subgroups by evaluating practical skills and personalities with the help of a random generator.
References
Brendan, C. (2017) Copy Culture: Sharing in the Age of Digital Reproduction. V&A Publishing. Available at: https://vanda-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/2018/06/15/11/42/57/e8582248-8878-486e-8a28-ebb8bf74ace8/Copy%20Culture.pdf [Accessed: 14 February, 2021].
Craig, J. (2019) ‘How are the V&A’s online collections used’, V&A Blog, 16 August. Available at: https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/digital/how-are-the-vas-online-collections-used [Accessed: 14 February, 2021].