Making Your Museum User Centric

Workshop
Alice Walker, Antenna International, USA, Emily Hellmuth, Indianapolis Museum of Art, USA, Christine Murray, Antenna International, USA

With museums facing increased competition to bring audiences in through their front doors, museums need to place them, their “users”, at the center of the museum visit in a new kind of experience that meets their individual needs and exceeds their expectations. Providing visitors with ‘user’ driven services and experiences in turn, allows museums to meet their own business objectives: increasing revenue, driving repeat visits, and developing even stronger relationship with their audience. By becoming more user-centric, museums can increase their relevancy, improve revenues and build audiences.

While seeming simple, this idea is also radical–in some ways it can redefine what a museum does. Can museums provide a unique, personalized experience that visitors can’t get anywhere else? Should a museum aim to enthrall as well as educate? Is it possible for an institution to reimagine itself as a service provided for and ‘used’ by visitors? What are its best “uses,” without compromising its mission?

This session uses interactive problem solving exercises that will work to address these questions. Facilitators from Antenna LAB and IMA will work with attendees to identify and understand the challenges their museums face in realigning around the user-centric concept and to road-map specific methods to overcome both internal and external challenges. As a result, attendees will have practical, feasible ideas to deliver incredible, relevant, memorable experiences.

What you’ll get:
Attendees will have a clear understanding of the actions needed to take to make your museum user centric, with advice from the most forward-thinking institutions in the sector. You will be equipped with a range of tangible ideas to take back to your colleagues, enabling internal stakeholders to understand the challenges and put in place a plan of action that meets the challenges head on.

Bibliography:
"Horizon Report 2015 Museum Edition." New Media Consortium Horizon Report (2015): n. pag. Horizon Report. NMC. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.

Leiber, Jessica. "The Future Of Museums Is Reaching Way Beyond Their Walls." Co.Exist. Co,Exist, 17 Apr. 2015. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.

"The Museum Visitor That Didn?t Exist In 1979." MuseumHack. N.p., 9 Sept. 2015. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.

Neumark, Julie. "3 TED Talks That Uncover the Secrets of Storytelling." http://www.convinceandconvert.com. Convince And Convert, n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2015.

Von Kreutzbruck, Vera. "?We Need to Stop Museums from Becoming Gated-communities?." Buenos Aires Herald. Buenos Aires Herald, 22 Sept. 2015. Web. 24 Sept. 2015.