Last week I attended my first Museums and the Web conference. It was one of the best experiences of my career. I met people from Tate, the Met, MoMA, the Getty, Dia, the Guggenheim, the Walker and other institutions. I listened to museum professionals from across the globe. I learned a lot — and had a blast.

In this post I want to look ahead to next year. I propose holding a workshop that conducts an in-depth evaluation of digital content in museums. I’m talking more about effectively packaging words/images/sound, less about technology.

For now, I want to contribute some of my own suggestions. The following ideas are largely based on my years in journalism and my experience developing online content for large audiences. They are not meant to be comprehensive or universal. And they’re not always sexy. However, I see them as a foundation upon which more successful content experiences can be built.

Finally, I should note that I’ve organized my content recommendations according to the sequence a user encounters while consuming an experience.

And with that introduction, let’s get started.

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Step 1: Make Them Care

Simply stamping a promotion or an interactive or a feature with the museum’s imprimatur is not enough. Users need relevance, context, energy. Some methods:

— Clarify the experience with quick summaries that briskly and clearly explain the content’s raison d’être. (Example: A promotion on the Brooklyn Museum home page that read “Take part in Split Second: Indian Paintings” led me to this page. Once there, I had no idea what the feature was about or why I should participate. And so I left. A quick summary could have fixed that.)

— Add relevance by highlighting timeliness. Perhaps new artwork has been discovered. Perhaps it’s the first time certain documents have been on display. Perhaps a filmmaker is appearing in person for a screening. Just tell me why I should care now. (Example: Where’s the timely hook in this Nevada Museum of Art feature? Or in this from the Guggenheim? On the other hand, this page from the Indianapolis Museum of Art does a better job.)

— Tap the universal appeal of narrative with stories. This could take the form of promotional language to pull people deeper or a self-contained narrative. (Example: In this feature, The New York Times Magazine tells an interesting story compactly. The title, “What They Were Thinking,” provides the rubric for the page and everything else flows intuitively. A full meal without a lot of fuss.)

— Cut to the heart with humanization. Stress people more, institutional VOICE OF GOD less. (Case Study: Some ways to humanize artists.)

— Add intrigue with a trip behind the scenes. (Examples: A Tate curator talks about her work on the Gabriel Orozco exhibit and the Indianapolis Museum of Art pops the hood on its stats. More here.) 

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Step 2: OK, They’re Hooked. Now What?

Provide users inviting discovery, interaction or expression points. Some methods:

— Encourage easy navigation with empathic organization. (Examples: This Walker Art blogs page is colorful, but posts are largely undifferentiated visually and the one-column design makes it harder to scan through digestible bites of content. Similarly, there is significant duplication of promotional copy in this Exploratorium feature. And in the themes page of MoMA’s William Kentridge feature, I see themes only a curator would recognize and a dizzying array of options that I find difficult to process.)

— Lower the engagement barrier with a capsule-sized experience when the content is robust. (Example: In this University of Maryland feature, users are forced to click through two introduction pages before getting a third page with introductory menus. A “highlights” package, or “in brief” summary with the option to dig deeper would net a wider audience, in my view.)

— Make audio and video more appealing by editing it into shorter chunks. This allows more precise labeling, clearer value, easier sharing (no more “jump to 3:25”) and a lower risk of boring users.

— Enlist your audience by offering simple expression options with clear benefits. (Example: Magnum Postcards and why I think it works.)

— Generate questions, conversation and debate where it fits best. This could mean setting up ongoing dialogue forums for provocative exhibits. Or a mobile feature that allows visitors to ask curators questions. Or an opportunity for visitors to ask the artist questions, as in this example from the Tate Modern. A final point: As much as some of this dialogue will, necessarily, be sprayed across multiple platforms, some form of organization and aggregation would add coherence and ease of access.

— Entertain with games or interactives that educate. (Example: John Baldessari’s In Still Life and my views on why it’s effective.)  

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Step 3: What Else You Got?

Don’t lead users to a dead end. Some methods to extend engagement:

—  Offer candy. I think of these as light, airy features that appeal to a fatigued brain. This could mean anything from a curator’s top 10 list (kind of like this from Criterion) to a visitor look book (kind of like this from New York) to artist Q&As.

— Extend the specific experience. You liked this quiz? Try this one. You liked this exhibit? Sign up to be notified when something similar opens in the future. 

— Surprise people. Sometimes users are finished with a topic and will be hooked to stick around through some serendipity. 

— Provide an opportunity to give back while users are engaged. One idea here: Has anyone thought of offering rotating personal sponsorships for online features? In other words, I make a donation and I am credited briefly for sponsoring, say, a museum’s collection search page?

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A Final Note

As I said at the beginning, I see these guidelines as building blocks for constructing more fundamentally sound content experiences. I included many of the examples above to demonstrate that there is room for improvement, not to single out institutions. I should also add that I realize there is much more to content than discussed above. (And we’re not even dipping so much into other key components like visual design or technology.) 

I look forward to more discussions about this important, and evolving, topic.