Since its inception, Musea has constantly evolved.
Dr. Evan Golub
Human-Computer Interaction Lab @ UMD
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Dr. Golub is a senior computer science lecturer and assistant director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at Maryland.
Upon interviewing Dr. Golub, we gained key insights regarding what museum visitors might look for in an app like Musea, including museum maps, scavenger hunts, and educational tools for teachers. We later incorporated some of these ideas into our prototype.
Dr. Robert Friedel
Department of History @ UMD + Smithsonian
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Dr. Friedel is a history professor at Maryland and former historian at the Smithsonian Institution, and has collaborated on an array of projects for museums around the world.
We learned many insights from Dr. Friedel, such as the idea that the way someone moves through a museum can be considered art itself, and that users would value a "visit summary" that details what kind of art they viewed during a particular museum visit.
The Capstone Fair provided us with real and useful feedback.
Overview
After we completed Musea, we were able to display it to a large group of people at the DCC Capstone Fair, where people can go around and view all of the projects that the current DCC class had been working on over the course of the semester. At the capstone fair we got a lot of feedback about how people felt about Musea and advice for what we should do in the future if we were to build this out into a full project.
Initial Reactions
Once people learned what our project was, many mentioned how it was a very cool idea and that they had experienced similar issues when either teaching or learning about art. There was a recognized gap between a person’s desire to learn about art and the information that a museum visit was able to provide. When people saw that Musea was the bridge that closed that gap, they became intrigued and excited to use it during future museum visits!
Testing the Product
Virtually everyone we spoke to commented on how nicely designed our app was. People said that the design was sleek and intuitive and that they had no trouble finding different desired pieces of information. They complimented our idea of including QR code scanning as they understood that many museum goers might not be interested in navigating through an interface to find a specific piece of art to get information about it. Some people felt particularly strong about this subject and expressed to us that they believed that people might not be interested in using an app like ours during their trip to a museum. We explained that we shared this same concern which is why we included a visit summary to allow users to comment and discuss about their visit in the comfort of their own home.
For the Future
Much of the advice that we heard was about the future of our application and how we would brand it if we were to go ahead and code the entire thing. One piece of advice that we heard at the capstone fair was that we could consider allowing for paid featuring of museums to generate revenue. We could reach out to museums and have them implement support for Musea in exchange for payment and a featured spot on our app. This would not only increase exposure for the museum, but would also increase exposure for us. Another one of our visitors also mentioned that we could potentially partner with instagram travel bloggers to increase interest in Musea for avid travelers. When people travel, they often visit the local museums so marketing to this demographic would work perfectly for us.