Let’s address this question from the “bottom line,” where we are looking at social media as a way to increase visitation and visibility. What we might call “bums in seats,” rather than the opportunities for interacting with and engaging audiences in social media.

In a nutshell: people now find you on the Internet. And, it’s a Social Web era. Search is Social and Web is Social. It’s no longer “because everyone is doing it.” It’s because “the Web itself and netizens now expect it,” which is quickly changing how people are finding and interacting with information. To get people through the door they have to find the door first.

1. “Search is Social”: Social media profiles and posts are indexed in Google, and also rank much higher since the introduction of the Google Panda algorithm in 2011. If your institution has Twitter and Facebook, maintained on a somewhat regular basis with keywords relative to your institution or region, you’ve increased your visibility in search engines multiple times. An increasing proportion of visitors and tourists are finding their information online, and you want your information as visible and as up-to-date as possible and at the top of a list of search results.
2. The ability to have a no-cost means of sending information and reminders about upcoming events and exhibitions to your local followers. If you continue to publish quality informative material, you’re also keeping it ”top of mind” as a weekend or evening destination for members of your own community.
3. The power is not just in your message and audience, but strength of your network and word-of-mouth. By pushing an event to your online community, one hopes that they in turn will share it with theirs. Hopefully it’s shared by someone influential who will introduce you to new audiences, supporters, donors, etc.
4. For outside promotion, a high proportion of writers rely on “social web” to find out about local activities. Many local journalists are using social media tools like Twitter (the age of the traditional event press release is drawing to a close). Again, the more these people are writing about you online, the more visible you become in search engines. And, you’re reaching the readership of the author, who is also distributing it through his/her social media, etc.
5. Online visitation is in itself a measure of “bums in seats” for your institution. In this day and age, it is often helpful to be able to say to your Board, funders, Directors, partners, etc. that you can demonstrate an increase in online reach (e.g. number of website visits, number of followers in social media, number of interactions, etc.).

What is gamification?

Gamification transforms new Web services (e.g. the development of mobile applications) by improving user engagement through increased interactivity of content. Given its attributes, gamification can have several advantages for museums, including:

• Improving interaction with visitors;
• Promoting participatory action (participation and engagement);
• Helping visitors discover museum collections in a more spontaneous, entertaining way;
• Creating visitor loyalty (by offering highly interactive and immersive content).

An example

The British Museum offers an interactive game called “Time Explorer” that allows young users to test their knowledge and take up various challenges.

A sometimes disappointing experience

However, many see gamification as a passing fad. It’s not that these sceptics do not see the advantage of incorporating more playful elements into “serious” applications (e.g. learning tools), it’s that they find the term “gamification” overused and poorly defined, and feel it does not offer enough entertainment for users in the long run. Promoters of gamification (often companies offering IT solutions) are said to be selling it using bombastic rhetoric that is not as achievable as promised. The final product is quite often less popular with and immersive for users than its creators imagined. A poorly designed user experience can quickly become repetitive.

Gamification: careful consideration required

It is clear that not all applications benefit from the integration of interactive and game elements, and that the final product is often less popular than anticipated. Carefully assessing the value of incorporating gamification into a project will help you decide whether the experience is worth it or not.

Help during the decision-making process

In his blog this past fall, Simon Tanner of King’s College Digital Humanities in London, U.K. introduced an interesting methodology to guide such decision-making. This model aims to provide a systematic way to evaluate the costs, benefits, and risks when considering a digital acquisition, especially one that would reshape an institution. Museum professionals could find this comprehensive means of measurement useful when contemplating the impact of digital resources.

The framework covers such topics as how to measure value, tracking outputs, and calculating results. The BVI is by no means the only model of its kind, but the basic premise provides an objective way of estimating the improved performance generated after a large investment that may fundamentally change business processes, or even be perceived as compromising the organization’s mandate.

Impact assessments

Tanner indicates that a significant challenge for cultural institutions is providing clear, evidence-based proof or data that their digital resources are resonating with the communities who utilize them. He argues that impact assessments are a necessary starting point. To begin the process, Tanner suggests that you must first know what you want to assess and why, understand what you want to do with the results of your assessment, and know how much it is worth for you to know this information.

Impacts are categorized as follows: social and audience impacts which indicate those who are affected or benefit from the value of this content; economic impacts for the organization or society; innovation impacts if the digital resource is enabling creation; and internal process impacts, which relate to the organization itself experiencing benefits.

Measuring value

The BVI model presents five primary modes of cultural value or “value drivers” for digital resources (adapted from: Tanner, S. (2012) “Measuring the Impact of Digital Resources: The Balanced Value Impact Model”, King’s College London, October 2012):

• Utility value: The utility afforded through use of the digital resources now or sometime in the future.
• Existence and/or prestige value: The benefit from knowing that a digital resource is cherished by persons living inside and outside their community. This value exists whether the resource is personally used or not.
• Education value: The awareness that digital resources contribute to their own or to other people’s sense of culture, education, knowledge, and heritage, and therefore value it.
• Community value: The benefit from the experience of being part of a community that is afforded by the digital resource.
• Inheritance/bequest value: The benefit from the inheritance passed down to them and satisfaction from the fact that their descendants and other members of the community will in the future be able to enjoy a digital resource if they so choose.

Performance indicators

Within these value drivers, it is important to design proper performance indicators to measure success (or lack thereof). The report gives examples of possible indicators: how large is the group of active users of your resource? What type of content interests your stakeholders most and least? Are stakeholders stimulated to learn more? Or, have any new or improved skills been acquired in the process?

Furthermore, the BVI process is structured around five stages: context; analysis & design; implementation; outcomes & results; review & respond. Impacts are measured for several types of stakeholders, which can include: donors, users, potential future funders, community leaders, media, academics, content providers, and managers.

Recommendations

The report recommends the measurement of a social return on investment (SROI), based on seven principles (as defined by the New Economics Foundation):

• Involve stakeholders
• Understand what changes
• Value the things that matter
• Only include what is material
• Do not over-claim
• Be transparent
• Verify the result

When to use the BVI Model

The BVI Model is generic enough that it can be used in a wide range of situations. For instance, it could help museums in devoting the appropriate level of funds and effort into digitizing content. Or the BVI can serve to better understand the ramifications of an impending upgrade, or build the case for the purchase of a new system. The model acts as a useful tool to evaluate whether spending resources will ultimately lead to positive change at an institution.

Devon Elliott presented an introduction of the much-anticipated 3D printer: how far they have come, and how accessible they currently are. While these types of technologies have been around for over a decade in the industrial design world in the form of stereolithography (SLA), they have only recently been modified to trickle down into mass market. There are plenty of opportunities for museums in this field: the creation of reproductions for sale or for comparative research purposes are two simple examples.

There’s also the software side of the 3D printing equation. Examples of thousands of objects have been created through freeware Trimble SketchUp (formerly Google SketchUp), and are available in their 3D Warehouse. The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) has created learning resources that demonstrate how simple the process of designing for 3D can be. Another great online outlet for the enthusiast is Thingiverse, which is an online community of 3D designers, and hosts a number of museum institutional members (check out the fantastic Museum Love in 3D category, hosted by the Art Institute of Chicago!).

Lastly, relatively accessible 3D scanning and capture solutions were demoed. While desktop laser scanners are on the market, they can be prohibitively expensive. 3D images can now be created right from the camera of your mobile phone through the use of apps such as Autodesk’s 123D Catch. For the gamer, the Xbox Kinect provides some fairly sophisticated image-based 3D capture, and museums have started incorporating these types of out-of-box tools in their exhibits and programming.

Mobile Historical & Curatescape

The University of Cleveland presented the Mobile Historical initiative, which aims to develop best practices for location-based digital collections using open-source tools. For history and heritage institutions, Mobile Historical provides an out-of-box reusable project template to create apps, and to date has been licensed and adapted by a dozen local history projects in the US.

Mobile Historical projects are built on the Curatescape mobile app framework, which is Omeka-based – an open-source Content Management System (CMS) solution. The Center for Public History & Digital Humanities at the University published Cleveland Historical as a first pilot app, for both iOS and Android. The geolocated app is map-focused, plotting interpretation points at historic points of interest in the city. Multi-media curatorial information for hundreds of these points has been created by both students at the University and the general public.

Eastern Washington State University licensed the platform to create Spokane Historical, and presented and discussed the distinct advantages of working with Curatescape. From a practical perspective, the Omeka CMS allows data to be readily re-purposed, is user-friendly, and has a large community for support. With respect to his work in the classroom with students who are creating the content, the project provides a fantastic teaching platform for digital skills, including Web publishing, digital imaging, and A/V creation. Through the volume of quality geo-located interpretation points created by the students, Spokane Historical has become an authority on Spokane’s history, for both the University and town.

Mobile and the Interpretation of Environmental History

Rideau Timescapes was presented in a session on environmental history by James Opp and William Knight of Carleton University. The iOS app takes visitors back in time through a photographic journey of the Rideau Canal, both a historic waterway and UNESCO World Heritage Site. To date, the app has seen success through a high number of downloads, but also experienced a number of specific challenges related to mobile interpretation of these outdoor historic sites. For example, while initially conceived to include augmented reality elements, the applications had difficulty differentiating between sites that had similar physical features (e.g. the locks of the Canal). The nature of the changing landscapes over time also presented problems with the identification and matching up of historic features to the photographic record.

The EXHIBITION series is a collaborative production distributed by BY Experience, which has brought various live filmed events to worldwide movie houses. It aims to capitalize on the public’s interest in large scale exhibitions. The first show of the series is “Manet: Portraying Life.” There are plans to follow up with screenings of “Munch 150” and “Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure.”

The show takes a documentary style approach, taking a camera crew after hours to a major art show. It is following upon the success of “Leonardo Live,” released in 2012, which provided biographical detail, historical context, visits to significant locations along with other background information, hosted by British art historian Tim Marlow.

While such movies are relatively new to commercial theatres, they have been showned for some time in larger museums that have large-format movie screens, such as IMAX. What do you think of this approach? Would you attend a cinematic screening of a distant blockbuster exhibit? Do you think it will be successful? Stay tuned!

SoLoMo

The report also noted the rapidly changing digital information-seeking behaviours of tourists and pointed out that they need cultural venue and events listings information that is up-to-date, local, niche, tailored to their requirements, easily discoverable and easily navigable.

In this respect, Culture24 discusses ‘SoLoMo,’ and the convergence of Social, Local, and Mobile. This is combined with a growing user need to “always be connected, share experiences and gather information from the local environment.” SoLoMo can be seen in the development of location based social networking apps like Foursquare. This importance of social media as a source of travel information was also noted in a recent CHIN News article.

Other key points include targeting:

• ‘under 30s’ and ‘over 55s,’ due to their likelihood of visiting cultural venues;
• people who already work in the cultural sector, as they are likely to engage in cultural tourism.

Full Report from Culture24

The report considered cultural tourists as visitors who are away from their normal place of residence and visiting cultural attractions such as museums, art galleries, and culture and heritage sites. For more detailed information, please consult the Culture24 report. Although the focus of the report is on European cultural tourism, some of the information about cultural tourism can be applicable beyond Europe, particularly the motivations of cultural tourists.

With this Institute, Google is looking to spur public consumption of cultural content in general. Most of the works now featured on the website have previously only been available to visitors able to travel to the museum. Even more, some objects had been decommissioned and locked away in museum vaults, inaccessible to the public. By digitalizing parts of their collections, partner museums are now able to share these archived documents with the public.

Impact on museums

Google claims that it does not want to take away from the role museums play in our society. The Institute states that its intention is only to help preserve and promote history, culture and art. However, most large museums already have their own websites to showcase their own collections online. Will the Google Cultural Institute syphon off traffic from the websites of these public institutions? Or rather, will the Institute generate interest in cultural content as a whole, indirectly growing demand for museums and their unparalleled level of expertise?

Though, it is likely too soon to know whether the museums that contributed to the Institute have benefited from their added exposure. But Razia Saleh of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, which partnered with Google, described the Institute’s impact as “taking away the notion of physical custody of archival material.” Increasingly, online cultural content will be grouped by subject matter, rather than by the institutions that house those physical artefacts.

Room for improvement

The Google Cultural Institute has been criticized for providing an online experience that’s too linear and rigid. Navigation is provided through a horizontal timeline where the user scrolls left to right through time. It is very hard to casually meander your way through the exhibits, like one would do in a museum. The amount of information can also be daunting, especially considering there are reportedly over 6 million photographs on the site.

Also, the range of topics featured has been said to be too narrow and serious. For the moment, most of exhibits are related to 20th century history, specifically stories of war and human suffering (for example: Second World War, Apartheid in South Africa, and the Cold War). Google has promised to expand the museum’s focus in future iterations, which would undoubtedly broaden its appeal.

Furthermore, while the site tries to offer a rich multimedia experience (such as video excerpts), it often falls short. Most exhibits are built around an assortment of images (with short descriptions), such as photographs of Anne Frank’s diary or Nelson Mandela’s unfinished hand-written manuscript. The Institute has yet to fully take advantage of the interactive nature of the Internet.

Ongoing development

While some of this criticism is warranted, nobody can deny the potential of such an initiative. Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (which shared some of its unseen collections with the Institute) stressed that “today, we must use all technologies at our disposal to preserve memory.” Indeed, the Institute’s depth of content is impressive and the site offers a slick presentation. As the project continues to evolve and add partners, Google will likely address some of these concerns.

Looking for partners

The Google Cultural Institute is often confused with the Google Art Project, which showcases artwork, mostly paintings, through stunning high-definition pictures. But these initiatives are separate, and they come on top of a recent push by Google Street View to map out the interiors of museums. CHIN has reported on these initiatives, which have all reached out the museum community for help. In fact, a request form exists on their webpage for cultural institutions that would be interested in contributing to new online exhibits.

The app “Wintering” was designed for a wide variety of both Apple and Android devices, and is available for free download at the iTunes AppStore and on Google Play.

New technologies

One of the revelations of the 2013 edition was the MakerBot 3D printer and scanner that can digitize a real-world object and print it in 3D in less than three minutes!

Now you can manipulate objects or control your computer simply through movements with Leap Motion. This affordable device could replace your computer mouse.

To increase the exposure, use and creative reuse of their collections, many heritage institutions are posting them online. The workshop Culture Hack: Libraries & Museums Open For Making, shows how institutions around the world are sharing their content and what people are doing with this open data. The workshop presentation is available online.

South by Southwest 2014

The next edition of SXSW Interactive will take place from March 7 to 13, 2014. In the meantime, you can watch several workshops from Interactive 2013 on the festival site.