Building User Experience (UX) Capacity to Support Digital Transformation in Museums

Tuesday, April 4th: 1:30pm - 3:00pm

Presenters:

Craig MacDonald

Associate Professor @ Pratt Institute

Elena Villaespesa

Digital Analytics Lead @ National Gallery of Art

Danielle Kingberg

@

Kyle Kisicki

@

Rachel Jackson

@

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Paper Abstract

To take full advantage of the potential offered by the digital space, museums and cultural institutions must be able to consistently apply User Experience (UX) methods to create enjoyable and understandable digital interfaces. Unfortunately, many of these organizations lack internal UX expertise, which means they need to partner with costly outside vendors to provide digital expertise, rely on internal staff and struggle through a process of trial and error, or do nothing and fall further behind in their digital offering. The COVID-19 crisis has intensified the digital transformation of museums. Although many museums are welcoming people back into their galleries, visitors’ demand for enjoyable digital experiences will persist. Absent a focused effort to build and sustain their internal capacity to apply effective UX practices, museums risk alienating their visitors with poorly designed interfaces that reduce engagement and decrease traffic in both virtual and physical spaces.

Our solution to this problem is to engage in User Experience Capacity-Building (UXCB), a process through which organizations can gradually create a more UX-friendly culture and build a sustainable and effective internal UX practice. UXCB is designed as a highly contextual process; it focuses on identifying and building on each organization’s existing strengths to then address its specific challenges. Conceptually, UXCB includes three stages. The first phase includes securing buy-in and support from relevant project stakeholders, performing a needs assessment to identify the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, and setting achievable and realistic goals. The insights from this stage are then used to inform the second phase, which is about implementing UXCB strategies. This step includes figuring out what UXCB activities will be used, what content they will focus on, what resources will be needed, and when and how they will be implemented. Finally, the third phase is evaluating the outcom

keywords: UX,UXCB,digital transformation,User Experience,User Experience Capacity-Building
ID: 11081