Last November I took part in the Museomix Be, in the city of Ghent. It was my first experience in this event and I was really looking forward to it.
Museomix is a creative sprint (somehow similar to a design jam) in which museum professionals and amateurs join together to create innovative exhibition mediation prototypes.
Assisted by the staff of the hosting museum, (curators, educators etc.) and by volunteers (coders, makers, facilitators etc.) every team worked in a different subject proposed by the museum.The event was hosted by the MSK Gent although the organisation team was not related to the museum.
Teams were composed by people with various profiles. Each person chose their profile when they first enrolled. In that way the teams could be balanced, having in them content experts, communicators, makers, cultural mediators, coders and graphic designers.
My profile was content expert, although in practice in our team were not real boundaries among roles.
Among the proposed themes were the orientation in the museum, the link between present and past and the masterpieces of the collection. We worked in the last one.
The schedule of work was quite tight. We had just three days to know (a little bit ) the museum and its collection, to think and develop an idea and finally to make that idea happen and to present it to the public.
The process
Our working process was a little bit different from what I am use to. We started directly with the brainstorming, without conducting any research involving the public, so in that way the Museomix still being the traditional idea of designing for instead of designing with. In other words we skipped the discovery phase of the design (thinking) process. We started from the necessities given by the museum.
The starting point of view was How can we highlight the masterpieces of the collection? From there we started to reflect on what is a masterpiece, what makes a masterpiece and if these characteristics and features are also related to the viewer in a personal way . Following this thread we reach the conclusion that some masterpieces are universal (and maybe they are not special for a specific viewer) and others are just personal masterpieces. Therefore, in the MSK Ghent collection there were not just big named masterpieces such as the Mystic Lamb (in restoration at the museum) or a presumed Boch painting but as much as the visitors could choose.
So we worked on the idea of selecting your own masterpiece with a test. Soon that idea took form in very simple app inspired in the dating application Tinder. By swiping Yes or Not the app would calculate which was the perfect match for the user among the pieces of the collection . However, they would not know the result through the app. Instead they should walk into the gallery to enjoy the art and perhaps to be suddenly founded by their own masterpiece. In this way there was a play between choose and being the chosen one.
Once the idea was developed we started with the delivery phase. The idea of MuseoMix is to make working prototypes for museum mediation. Our prototype did not intend to provide information but to appeal to the emotions of the visitors. Because of this we wanted to do something theatrical, playing with sound and lights. For the prototype we selected one painting that would be the Masterpiece of all the visitors that would use the app (also a mock up).
The chosen one was Alfred Stevens’ Marie Madeleine The team wrote a script and recorded it, we installed some lights too. As we did not have beacons or other kind of sensors we went for a Wizard of Oz trick, using WhatsApp for telling the person in the control room of the museum when to switch off the lights while other team member was in the gallery playing on the sound with a remote.
Hey psssst! #artinder #museomix #museomixbe pic.twitter.com/O3hVLIESm7
— Fien Van Houtven (@FienVanHoutven) 7 de noviembre de 2015
A first attempt
Finally we tested the prototype with the public. Our Artinder was born. And it went really well. People were really surprised and enjoyed it. It is a pitty that I do not have a video of the complete thing!
Recently people from Brussels Museums got in touch with us to talk about the concept and to explore the possibility of working on it.
Some final considerations
Although I tried to fit our work in a framework we did not really use any, apart from the milestones marked in the timetable. In my opinion even if our idea was very good, that it was, I think we should have done a little bit more of brainstorming, just to avoid feeling in love with our ideas and to push a little bit more the boundaries. I missed too going out and speak with the public to do a little bit of design research, even if it would have been just a guerrilla kind research. Also and maybe because I am a service designer and not a product designer I felt like the event could be better if the prototypes could be not just for mediation and not just technology based.
However, MuseoMix is a great event, organised by volunteers that love museums and hosted by museums that are open to try new things.
The atmosphere is fantastic, with a bunch of people very dedicated and passionated, ready to work hard and to enjoy it doing that during a whole weekend. Some of these people are professionals and others amateurs but all of them have great ideas and very valuable skills. Although not always teamwork is an easy thing, ideas become reality with work and enthusiasm.
A really good experience that is useful to do networking and to meet interesting people both in a personal and in a professional level. Also very good project from which you can take inspiration. Would be great to be able of organising something similar in Spain, anyone is up to?
The Design Explorer 