Find below, six ways how design, technology and innovation can transform your museum experience. For a new generation of audiences and communities.
Museums are time-machines
In 2020, there were over 2 million visitors to the Museé de Louvre in Paris, making it the most visited museum in the world. Yes, the number stands solid in-spite of the pandemic. The world loves museums and rightly should.
Museums are probably best described as time-portals that take you to an era by presenting content and artefacts from a preserved slice of time. This is where exhibits, collections and programs influence visitors to discover stories in an interactive format.
Museums have existed for centuries and been used as learning centers for history and culture. Ignore them at your own peril. After all as the saying goes, "those who forget history are condemned to repeat it".
Holocaust museums are not just physical addresses. They are living classrooms that vividly teach the world what never to forget, what never to become. The Louvre preserves some of the greatest works of art, sculptures and objects from ancient civilizations. The list is endless.
They generate capital & CIVIC PRIDE
Conservatories and museums also generate capital, both socio-cultural and economic capital. As per the UNWTO, 42% of the world travels for culture, and here museums and conservatories play a key role. Each year, more than 850 million visits are made to US museums from all across US society, and that number continues to grow. The total economic contribution of museums in 2016 amounted to more than $50 billion in GDP, 726,200 jobs, and $12 billion in taxes to local, state, and federal governments.
New museums have contributed to the economic and social regeneration of industrial cities. In ranking America’s Best Cities, Bloomberg placed the greatest weight on the leisure offerings including the density of museums, followed by educational and economic metrics…and then crime and air quality.
But like everything, museums need next version upgrades
The world of museums and conservatories has not only changed post the pandemic, but also opened up huge opportunities for them to evolve and elevate their experience.
According to a recent study, there has been a nearly 70% drop in visits to historical museums, historical societies, and other history-related institutions in 2020. Due to the pandemic, Tate galleries saw a 7.5 million drop in visitors in 2020/2021, which was the largest drop in visitors since the first year.
Apart from black swan events like the pandemic, it is also true that new audiences are getting to be digital-first while older audiences are becoming digital migrants. Museums that present static content, have challenges of repeat visits and visitors.
There is a danger in not moving with the times. Culture is after all transmissible heritage and If heritage is not carried across generations then culture dies off. This is where museums and conservatories step in. They preserve our intangible and tangible heritage. And hence museums and conservatories must always find new ways and means through which they market, remain relevant and accessible for newer generations in a digital first world.
Unbox what your museum can be
A museum is usually thought of as a physical address along with what it contains and preserves as cultural artefacts, memorabilia and collectibles. Is a museum just a physical address? Or a living entity? Is it only tactile? Or can it be digital too? Can it be a network of preservers. Can it tell stories outside its campus? In 2023, in a post pandemic world, we need to reimagine the museum universe. It has to be thought of as a living system rather than just a static and pickled space with its artifacts.
Therefore ONE MUST imagine the museums of tomorrow as living museums that have no boundaries of physicality, dimension and media and can live on between the spatial, physical, digital and THE metaverse. They are PHYSICAL, they are digital, THEY ARE VIRTUAL AND social all at once.
In a post-pandemic world, museums must reimagine their offering and make themselves more dynamic and in tune with audiences and visitors who are seeking omni-channel experiences.
The answer first lies in mapping the customer journey of the visitors and adapting to it. Today's audiences live a hybrid life and migrate back and forth between different channels - physical, digital, social - all at one.
Audiences have changed in 3 ways
(1) The experience of the museum is not just while in the museum. It begins well before the physical visit (visitors browsing, discovering and getting influenced digitally before they physically come to your space) and can continue much after the physical visit (visitors turning into digital subscribers and continuing to follow updates).
(2) Moreover audiences are also getting used to access content from where they are (blame it on digital devices, streaming platforms and services that are increasingly bringing themselves to where the customer is). And making oneself more accessible to visitors is a great differentiator.
(3) Museums are also being challenged to re-imagine their roles in ways that extend beyond colonization and represent the voices of the forgotten. This in itself presents a huge opportunity. For countries like India, which is often called the Museum of the human race, new generation museums and reimagining traditional museums is but inevitable. Historian and scholar, V.A. Smith called India an Ethnological Museum because of its sheer living diversity.
Here are six ways to make your museum EXPERIENCE dynamic
1. Digital innovation
Digital transformation can take many forms, from enabling museum visitors to use smartphones or tablets site to enhance their experience, to digitizing discovery and making content available online. It can engage with people before or after their visits via online channels. The tool kit can also include, projection mapping, interactive displays, AR + VR, holographic displays, contactless donations - the list is long.
Experiential Digital Platforms & Services like House of Stories™ help museums in engaging digital audiences, storytelling at scale and amplifying the physical museum experience.
Digital, interactive and always accessible
House of Stories™, is an experiential, digital, interactive, content & storytelling platform that helps brands, museums and businesses with heritage magically transform the experience for an increasingly digital-first world.
It is exhibition friendly and markets for you
This not only helps you present and market your content in immersive ways but also augments and amplifies the experience and discovery of your physical museum. This can be excellent for exhibitions and interactive walls.
It is device responsive and adaptive
House of Stories™, can also be used across physical retail spaces, large interactive displays, experience rooms and exhibition forums especially in International markets where narrating heritage and craft can be huge differentiators.
Platforms like House of Stories make museums and brands with content, more dynamic, highly discoverable and millennial friendly.
Interactive and digital platforms also help museums to simplify marketing and distribution for audiences across the world while playing a critical role in raising interest amongst digital-first millennials and Gen Zs. This helps build immersive engagement and cultivate interest in museums amongst people.
2. Spatial Experience Design
Spaces today, where we are persuaded to spend a lot of dwell-time by their creators or brands - be it retail stores, work-places, experience centers, hotels, restaurants or museums - are becoming the very story itself. The experience itself becomes the brand. And not being on-brand, on-people and on-experience can be a costly mistake.
The most experiential spaces share three common characteristics - (1) Powerful story they bring alive, (2) Experiences here stay cohesive and unique & (3) Design is informed and infused with culture.
4. Make it portable and versatile with new media
Reinvent heritage storytelling with hybrid media and experiential innovations.
For instance how about a travelling trunk?
A mobile museum or a portable museum is an educational outreach program and format that can bring the museum to the people rather than vice versa. This could be through Recreational Vehicles (RVs) or trucks/trailers that drive to schools, libraries and rural events or even through trunks and experiential boxes.
Seen here is a concept design for the tribal heritage project at NYUCT Design Labs
This can operate with interesting business models including using grants or donor support, to fulfil the goal of making the museum exhibit accessible to underserved populations.
5. Sounds and aural navigation
Even reimagining traditional media with new platforms and design + technology infusion can help reinvent an experience.
Sounds of India was conceived to help travelers, culture lovers and heritage buffs discover the Indian subcontinent through its authentic sounds and music. The idea was to add an enriched aural layer which augments storytelling.
Would it not be wonderful to have local music, tunes of the land and folk sounds of India, help travellers navigate through its culture - people and places, mythologies, communities, fables, customs and culture. Digitally.
With newer technologies, design and code, one can practically create amazing aural universes that preserve for instance the oral history and traditions of many heritage communities.
Sound Maps of India is an IP of NYUCT Design Labs, created in partnership with Sunoh.
6. AR & VR Integration
We are moving into a hybrid world where the virtual, digital and immersive co-exists and co-operates with our physical world. They would be inter-operable.
The best experience is one which brings the customer inside a story that the customer can be in charge of. Where the customer can navigate her way through delightful moments of interaction and information. This is where XR comes in.
XR stands for “extended reality,” an umbrella term that covers VR, AR, and MR. It covers the full spectrum of real and virtual environments.
The fact that augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality are here to stay and make experiences more immersive is a given. But making sure that it fits in seamlessly with your museum's customer experience journey and the brand narrative is critical.
NEXT is an experience design approach at NYUCT Design Labs to help bring your static, still assets including walls and buildings roaring back to life.
XR led discoveries are wonderful for experiential brands and spaces - cities, airports, museums, hotels, retail brands, galleries, complexes and more. These physical addresses can virtually come alive to tell brand new stories. Contextually.
Metaverse, NFT, VR, AR and holo-worlds shouldn't be thought of as the new toys, but rather as intelligent and intuitive extensions of your brand's experience.
Program design and innovation
Innovations in programming, curation and intelligent integrations with like minded brands and businesses can be excellent drivers of interest and following for museums. This is a subject that can by itself be an innovation. And today businesses and organizations are looking for intelligent and mindful brand integrations.
Design thinking, technology and sharp marketing can help figure ways and means through which museums can better market and engage institutions, patrons and donors.
Your museum-experience can be designed in ways where impact and commerce are never apart, and where the promise of the museum is never compromised.
