review of comment kiosks at brooklyn museum

7/24/2019 Review of Comment Kiosks at Brooklyn Museum

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E X H IB IT IO N IST SPR IN G ' 1 5

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bySara Devine andShelley Bernstein

Sara Devine is Manager of Audience

Engagement and Interpretive

Materials at the Brooklyn Museum

in New York City. She may be

contacted at

[email protected].

Shelley Bernstein is Vice Director of

Digital Engagement and

Technology at the

Brooklyn Museum.

She may be contacted at

If you would like to comment on

this article or others in this issue,

please go to the NAME page on

Facebook or send us a tweet

@NAMExhibitions.

Responsive in Planning and Practice:Comment Kiosks at the Brooklyn Museum

At the Brooklyn Museum, we prideourselves on being responsiveto the needs of our diverse

visitors. Our mission, and indeed ourstaff, places the visitor at the center ofeverything we do. We spend a good dealof time getting to know our constituentsthrough a variety of techniques rangingfrom audience evaluation to crowd-curated exhibitions. We believe that

communicating openly with our visitorsallows us to be a truly nimble andresponsive museum.

For the past seven years, weve used iPadkiosks in select exhibitions to establishthis open line of communication. TheseASK kiosks invite visitors to askus questions, selections of which weanswer in waves throughout the run ofthe exhibition. Questions and answersare posted on the kiosk and online withassociated exhibition pages; the visitors

who pose questions receive a personalemail response.The ASK kiosks in our galleries today arequite different from the models we firstinstalled in 2007. Each subsequent versionhas been informed by visitor use andinput. Though the process has not alwaysbeen smooth, in the end weve found theASK kiosks to be a useful tool for visitorsand staff alike, and one that can beadapted by other institutions seeking bothto engage with and learn from visitors.

Our ASK kiosks began as simple, digitalcomment books. At first, they were minipersonal computers with touch screens;later we updated to iPads. These kioskssat in every exhibition and gatheredvisitor responses to the prompt tell uswhat you think; the kiosks automaticallyemailed those responses, in digest form, to

appropriate curatorial and visitor servicesstaff. Selected comments (both good andbad) were posted in-gallery and online.This feedback provided insight on whatworked and what did not within any givenshow. In some isolated cases, we were ableto adapt the visitor experience on the flyin response to feedbackfor example,turning off a sound effect that visitorsfound distracting. With larger issues, staff

used feedback to inform and improvefuture exhibitions. The digital commentbooks were great tools for direct feedback,but they were, most often, a one-waystreet of information, generally responsiveonly in the sense that they gave ourstaff an instant look at the experienceof a visitor.We began to wonder if we could usethese kiosks to encourage deeperengagement, so we shifted to a formatwe called In Conversation. Instead

of a simple text-only start screen witha tell us what you think prompt, weadjusted the start screen to display ashort video call-to-action (fig. 1). Thisvideo had to be played and an (unverified)email address provided before a visitorcould leave a comment. These simplesteps cut down the amount of horseplay(I want my mummy in the MummyChamber, for example) we had seenon the tell us what you think versionsof the comment books. The number ofcomments submitted overall decreased

with the introduction of these requiredsteps. However, while we considered 30percent of visitors comments as insightfulcomments (something beyond I like it)on the older kiosks, we judged 70 percentto be meaningful on the new ones.So while the number decreased, thequality increased.

We believe that

communicating

openly with

our visitors

allows us to be

a truly nimble

and responsive

museum.

[email protected].


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review of comment kiosks at brooklyn museum

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