We began with a very short list of options in a drop down menu that included the special exhibitions, a few specific collection areas, and the collection more generally. We quickly found the need to add a few more options. For example, the admissions team asked for a “just in the neighborhood” option as it’s a common response to the question (though the data shows it’s not as common as they likely felt it was).

The survey appears in a pop-up window and has a drop-down menu of options. Unfortunately, the option to skip or cancel is baked-in; we can’t make this a required question to complete the transaction.

Results for the first two months are interesting. In July, the permanent collection ranked highest in response rate, while for August it was our Pierre Cardin special exhibition. The initial lack of options is one of the reasons for the high “other” response rate in July, which dipped the second month as more options were added. Currently, we have 16 options plus skip/decline. This feels like a lot, but maybe it’s ok. In particular, I wonder about including Korean art and African art in the list at the moment since both are temporarily off-view, but it would help us track an uptick once those collections are on view once more. We also have to remember to update the list regularly as special exhibitions open and close. For example, both Liz Johnson Artur and One: Egúngún exhibitions closed mid-August, which explains the dip in responses.

A quick comparison of the total number of survey responses (which should be every transaction) to total number of visitors who were required to visit the admissions desk shows the transaction count is about 60-65% of the visitor count. Multiple tickets can be purchased through a single transaction—and we know most of our visitors come in pairs or groups—and that feels close to the right percentage. I think we are still getting more cancellations than we should and we’ll keep working on it. The admissions team is meant to pose the question in a casual and conversational manner so it doesn’t feel like a survey (or an interrogation!) and select a response in order to proceed with the sale, although it is possible to cancel and move on. To avoid cancellation, we included a skip/decline option. Unfortunately, not everyone is consistently asking the survey question, which we know because we can run reports on who is logging which responses. For example, we found one person mostly just cancelled the survey in the first week and were able to speak with them. While we don’t want survey completion rate to become punitive, we do want to encourage completion because the information is important for us as an institution. Finding that balance can be tricky.

After two months, we are still working out the kinks, mostly in terms of making this process habit for the admissions team. A next step is to work with our Tech team to create a report that would knit together the survey answer, ticket info, and zip code from each transaction so we can compare the data set as a whole. That would be a pretty powerful triumvirate. 

Cards feature a detail of William Merritt Chase’s portrait of Lydia Field Emmett, with instructions.

In preparation, we discussed our learnings from previous themed tours and established a few small but important goals for the structure and promotion of this engagement activity. Specifically, we wanted to manage visitor expectations by specifying the tour location and keeping that area clearly defined (just one floor, in this case); indicating in advance what the format would be (i.e., texting/chatting); and offering the user a prompt word to send as their first message.

Our palm card for this new tour includes all the above information, succinctly stated, as well as a detail of a favorite painting from our American Art collections. For card handout, we’re concentrating on the fifth floor. Cards are displayed in a rack near the elevator that visitors are taking to reach that floor. The cards are also placed at the ticket check-in kiosk for Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion, where Visitor Experience ticketing staff can hand them out and explain them. Our ASK Ambassadors are also promoting the tour activity as they circulate around the Museum, of course!

Once a visitor begins the tour, the ten stops encompass works in a range of media from different locations and time periods, from a Chiriqui gold pendant (circa 1000-1500) to Luigi Lucioni’s portrait of artist Paul Cadmus (1927). For each one, the ASK team offers a few interesting facts, sometimes touching on past trends in cosmetics and grooming as well as costume history.

These women’s pant-suits were as edgy in the 1930s as Cardin’s unisex designs would be in the 1960s.

We can also make occasional parallels between historical clothing, jewelry, and accessories and Cardin’s designs, to complement users’ visits to that exhibition or to inspire them to check it out in the future.

So far, we’ve had some positive user response. One visitor thanked us by writing, “This has been terrific, a great interactive tour. Definitely encouraged me to look closer, which I do like and tend to do.” We’ll be tracking visitor use and reactions throughout the run of this exhibition, to be shared at a later date!

Our collection of decks span a variety of subjects. While some, like “Jewish Ritual Objects” are object focused, others capitalize on small details, like hieroglyphs or hand gestures, to broaden the thematic scope.

Our original goal in partnering with Tiny Cards was to reach new audiences. Not solely by publishing photos and fun facts to their platform, but by framing our collection in new and engaging ways. Our themed decks explored Egyptian hieroglyphs, Buddhist mudras, and Jewish ritual objects, to name a few.

These decks proved a stimulating challenge to formulate, requiring both creative thinking and rigorous research. They were also surprisingly time consuming to produce, requiring collaboration with our curatorial, editorial, and design departments, which often created unforeseen delays. From start to finish, producing a deck took about 5 weeks. In the beginning, we were publishing biweekly, but that quickly became unsustainable and we scaled back to once per month. Even then, we kept returning to the same question: what is the return on this significant investment of staff time and energy?

As time went on, it became less about whether Tiny Cards was fun (it was!) and more about whether Tiny Cards was useful (hard to say). Were we reaching this sought after “new audience”? Were we meeting their wants and needs? What made a deck popular? How could we apply that knowledge to create more successful decks in the future? And so on.

Metrics are limited, which make many of these questions unanswerable, but here’s what we do know. We have access to the number of people who follow our account (1,000) and the number of people who have “pinned” a deck, essentially bookmarking or favoriting it for future reference. 9,339 pins across 24 decks is not insignificant. These pins serve as a measure of relative popularity and success within our 24 deck set.

Here are the top and bottom 5 Tiny Cards decks, according to pins. The “success” of our decks varied wildly with some garnering as many as 961 pins and others only 39.

What’s interesting is that publish date doesn’t seem to have an impact on accumulated pins. Rather it’s the content of the decks, likely as conveyed by the title and cover image, that draw people in. For example, our 3rd published deck, titled Images of God: Hindu Deities, is our most popular with 961 pins. It’s followed by our 12th published deck, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, with 795 pins. In fact our top 5 decks, published 3rd, 12th, 4th, 23rd, and 19th respectively, account for 40% of our total pins. 
Without more granular data, it’s hard to say exactly why these decks performed so much better than the others. Three-fifths of the Top Five deal with religion, so maybe that’s a draw, but then how do you explain our worst performing deck International Buddha, which has only 39 pins? Egypt is generally popular, right? But the other Egyptian decks rank 7th, 9th,12th, 13th, and 16th in terms of pins. Highlights of Art History (679 pins) being a draw for students might account for its popularity, but our other “art history 101” deck on the Ashcan School has less than half the pins (300). The truth is there’s just nowhere further to go until and if more data becomes available, which seems unlikely.

Tiny Cards has prompted the formulation of new frameworks for interpreting our collection that can be exploited elsewhere. For instance, the research conducted for this deck on games could inform in-gallery engagement activities.

Let’s broaden the scope of our lessons learned beyond the data for a moment. This project served as an outlet for creative energy that will no doubt spark inspiration for future activities. I’ve already been thinking of ways to incorporate gameplay into our galleries after researching the various game boards, playing cards, and die in our collection for the It’s All Fun and Games deck. This wrap up also highlights the importance of establishing goals, measures for success, and evaluation strategies before or shortly after we rollout public facing activities. Otherwise, how can we continue to make data driven decisions to serve our audiences, both existing and untapped?

While the decks we have already created will remain on the platform for audiences to enjoy, it’s time for us to redirect our energies into projects with more measurable impact. Goodbye Tiny Cards; it has indeed been Big Fun.

This was the message on palm cards that our ASK Ambassadors distributed to Museum visitors throughout June. As a special engagement activity for Pride Month, visitors could take an ASK-guided tour of our galleries and learn more about gender and queer identity in art. 

The card featured a detail of a work by Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski, on view in the exhibition “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow.”

This tour could be taken as a complementary activity to the special exhibition Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall or as a standalone activity. And, as with all our ASK engagement offerings, we kept things responsive and personalized —every visitor could set their own pace and tone.

Visitors could begin their experience in the Museum lobby at a painting by Kehinde Wiley.

As we envisioned it, this app-guided tour would include a few very popular works from our collections (like Kehinde Wiley’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps) as well as some lesser-known works. They could be works by artists who identified as LGBTQ+, portraits of LGBTQ+ individuals, or works that touched on broader themes of gender identity.

The ASK Team collaborated to select ten works of art with a range of dates and media, from Donald Moffett’s Lot 043017 (Multiflora, Radiant Blue) to a coffin in the Ancient Egyptian collection, from Aaron Ben-Shmuel’s stone bust of Walt Whitman to Deborah Kass’s neon wall-piece After Louise Bourgeois. They compiled information about these works into a reference document and they strategized about giving directions to help the visitor navigate from stop to stop.

Elizabeth of the ASK Team tracked these tours (which accounted for about 22% of our app traffic) throughout June , and she noticed an interesting split. Visitors who began engaging with us on the Museum’s first floor were more likely to invest in the total tour experience, following our cues to visit works on the third, fourth, and fifth floors of the Museum. They often spent more than a half-hour with us for this itinerary.

Special labels with Pride flag icons were placed beside the “tour stops.”

Meanwhile, other visitors encountered individual works with our ASK Pride Month labels in the galleries and sent questions about them. These visitors were usually satisfied with learning about that particular work and might move one more stop nearby when we invited them to continue chatting. However, they were less interested in experiencing the complete tour.

The ASK Team also received a few requests from visitors who were ready to go even further. For example, when one visitor asked whether they could see anything by LGBTQ+ artists in the new special exhibition Rembrandt to Picasso: Five Centuries of European Works on Paper, we added a drawing by Rosa Bonheur to our list.

It’s been two years since we first tailored an ASK activity to a specific show or event, during Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern, and we continue to learn from each iteration. Next up? An engagement option related to the special exhibition Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion. More about that soon!

1. Are ASK users first-time or returning museum visitors?
2. Are ASK users avid museum goers?
3. What kind of experience are users having?
4. Are the users participating in the Frida Kahlo ASK activities?
5. Are the ASK users using the app in Spanish?

The students determined a survey was best, which the ASK team sent via a link as part of the chat. This was more challenging than we thought because figuring out the timing for when to send the survey link proved difficult. You don’t want to share it first-thing, before anyone’s engaged, but finding the end of the conversation can be tough; some users just stop texting. The team had to play with timing a bit and I’m not sure we ever found the perfect moment. 

As with the Kahlo visitor study, we offered an incentive for completion: every 25th respondent got free tickets to Frida Kahlo. We ended up switching that incentive to free Kahlo Dance Party tickets since most users during this time had already seen the exhibition. In the end, we netted 115 responses over 6 weeks. As with the Kahlo evaluation, the results I’m sharing here include some of their interpretation of the data (reviewed by me) as well as some of my own analysis. 

Let’s break down the results. 

Are ASK users first-time or returning museum visitors?

Respondents were almost 50/50 split, with just slightly more repeat visitors. A caveat here though, is that we make this question time-bound, i.e. “within the last year,” so we don’t know if visitors meant life-time visits or something else.

Are ASK users avid art museum goers?

Yes! A majority (72%) visit art museums three plus times in a typical year (this question was timebound). Only 7% of respondents noted it was their first visit to any art museum, while almost 40% visit 6+ times a year.

What kind of experience are users having?

As indicated in the past through positive app store reviews, I’m happy to say we continue to provide a good experience for users. Over 98% of respondents would recommend the app to a friend. The most popular reasons given for this answer included descriptions that could be coded as “fun,” “informative,” and “helpful.” 

Are the users participating in the Frida Kahlo ASK activities?

Yes. Roughly a third (34%) of respondents checked the scavenger hunt as a way they used ASK, while 19% used the Kahlo themed cards.  Interestingly, although this question was a “check all,” a slight majority (57%) only checked on option. It’s possible this could be attributed to users have one main reason for using the app, though it could also be people simply filling out the survey quickly without stopping to think critically about all the ways they used it. Users tend to rely heavily on photos in chats, so the fact that only 22% check that use suggests it’s wise to take these responses with a grain of salt. 

Are the ASK users using the app in Spanish?

Unfortunately, the dashboard doesn’t track this for us automatically, so the way the students chose to get at this was to determine users’ preferred language. It doesn’t quite answer the question, but helps unpack user preferences. Over 80% of respondents (93) listed English and only 2 people listed Spanish. We do know, however, from the Kahlo visitor study that a little over a third of visitors interviewed used the Spanish language materials. Perhaps the lack of synergy between studies means Spanish-speakers aren’t using the app, despite invitations in Spanish to do so. More data would have been required to be really sure.

So, what does it all mean?

We learned a few things from the study. First, our assumption that more first-time visitors would use the app for the Kahlo activities—mostly because we felt like it was an easy way into exploring a new place—was correct. Those least likely to use the scavenger hunt in particular were the users who had visited us the most. 

Second, it’s nice to know most people have a good experience with us, no matter how they use ASK. A few comments include: 

The ask app totally enhanced my museum going experience. Typically I can find usage of phones in the galleries to be pretty distracting, but this app advances the experience. It’s great to have my questions answered in a friendly way- and by a person!

Due to ASK at the Brooklyn Museum, I rate this museum the top museum out of all I visited before!

Keep it up please! This is the best form of digital technology yet!

And third, as can be the case with visitor studies, this one leaves me wanting a bit more. Not through any fault of the students who worked on it, but due to the fact that it’s whetted my appetite for more info about our users. This study paints a small picture of what some of our users experienced, but what would happen if we ran this for longer? Switched out some questions? Got more responses? Something we may have to explore…

A visitor study of “Frida Kahlo” was a perfect project for some of my Pratt grad students.

In my last post, I posited that although we don’t have a CRM, we are gathering data in the ways we can to help inform our decisions. One recent example are the two evaluation projects completed by Pratt graduate students in the Museums and Digital Culture program last semester. I had eight students in the Audience Research & Evaluation course, so I split them into two groups of four for final projects. One team was responsible for completing a visitor study about ASK users and the other about visitors to Frida Kahlo. For this post, I’ll focus on the latter. The student project team for the Kahlo evaluation was Sydney Stewart, Megan Paqua, Grace Poole, and Caroline Baer. The results I’m sharing here are their interpretation of the data (reviewed by me) and their work (including the visuals).

The objective of the study, as defined by our institutional needs and finalized by project team, was to determine: who is coming to Frida Kahlo and will they return to the Museum? In addition, we wanted to know if the Spanish language materials were useful. The first part was really to help us check our assumption that Frida Kahlo might bring in a lot of first-time visitors. The second was to give us some insight on the ROI of the translation work we did for this exhibition, which was the most extensive we’ve ever done—ticketing pages, signs in the building, floor plan, and labels were all provided in both English and Spanish. While we’ve provided label copy in other languages in the past, we had yet to translate logistical information beyond the floor plan. We have a small team and none of our editors are native Spanish speakers. Best practice requires someone for translation as well as proofreading and layout review. Thankfully we have several fluent Spanish speakers (some of whom are native speakers) who helped in the review process and even translated our last minute signs. (Thank you Stephanie, Rachel, Jaime, and Allison!) Working with Eriksen Translations and our in-house powerhouse, we were able to get the translation completed, but it took a lot of extra time and resources.

We determined that the best approach to getting answers to our research objectives were interviews with Kahlo visitors. While we had visitor time and attention, we also asked about how they heard about the exhibition and how their experiences was. All eight students, myself, and Rachel Lewis (who conducted interviews in Spanish for us, thank you!) conducted interviews in the exhibition shop, which was exit point of the exhibition. We offered 10% shop coupons as an incentive to take the survey.

Results

We interviewed visitors during class time on four Thursday afternoons from about 3:30pm-5:30pm in March-April 2019. In total we completed 259 interviews. Below are the results, as written in the students’ final report (in quotes):

Who came to Frida Kahlo?

“Visitors came from a wide geographic area. Visitors to Frida Kahlo were almost evenly split between tourists and New York City residents. The majority of New York City residents were from Brooklyn, but the show also attracted visitors across the city. Overall, domestic visitors came from 26 states plus Puerto Rico, and international visitors came from 8 different countries.” Side note: the data is skewed since it only accounts for responses during a certain time window: Thursday afternoons. Responses would likely be different on different days. Weekends, for example, likely bring in more locals on their day off.

Visitorship was almost evenly split between locals and tourists, which may be accounted for by the fact that interviews took place Thursday afternoons only.

Did they use the Spanish language materials?

“Visitors responded positively to the inclusion of Spanish language materials, particularly the exhibition labels, whether or not they used them personally, and indicated that continued inclusion of bilingual materials would make them more likely to make a return visit to the museum.

Visitors frequently remarked on the relevance of the Spanish language materials for an exhibition about Frida Kahlo. Many visitors expressed an interest in expanding foreign language offerings in future exhibitions when appropriate, especially for exhibitions featuring artist from non-English speaking communities.”

The majority of visitors interviewed did not use the Spanish language materials.

How did they hear about the exhibition?

“35% of visitors reported learning about Frida Kahlo through word of mouth, although social media posts as well as reviews in major news publications were the next most effective at reaching visitors. On-site signage was also useful for attracting visitors who had not heard about the exhibition prior to their arrival at the museum.”

Word-of-mouth ranked highest among ways people learned about the exhibition.

How was their experience? Will they come back to the Museum?

“No matter where visitors are coming from, Frida Kahlo was the primary motivation for visitors to come to the Brooklyn Museum, whether it was out of personal interest, to visit with a friend or family member, or based on a recommendation or advertisement. The majority of visitors expressed having positive opinions about the exhibition and their visit overall, even when they had complaints about other aspects of their experience.

Visitors had a clear interest in returning to the museum for special exhibitions, especially if the focus is on diverse communities or artists of color. Many visitors stated that they associated the Brooklyn Museum with this type of programming and were more positively disposed towards the institution as a result.”

For 71% of repeat visitors, “Frida Kahlo” specifically and special exhibitions in general are the reason to return to the Museum.

What would visitors like to see more of at the Museum?

“When asked what they would like to see more of at the museum, 10.71% of visitors responded with requests for more activities designed for children. These visitors were overwhelmingly returning visitors, indicating that this is a current gap in the Museum’s programming within the exhibition space.”

Learnings

This evaluation confirmed some of what we already knew:

• Special exhibitions are a big draw for first time and repeat visitors alike.
• Word-of-mouth is important, though it’s sometimes tough to parse out the nuances of this answer. While some people genuinely couldn’t remember exactly where they heard about it, for others there might be more to the story. For example, their friend told them about it either through social media or because that friend saw it on social media. So does that count as word-of-mouth or social media? Or both? More to play with here to get better data to help our marketing team.

And gave us some new insights:

• The majority of visitors felt that the Spanish materials contributed positively to their experience whether they used them or not.
• There’s a desire for more activities for children specifically in the exhibition galleries. As reported: “Of the individuals who responded to what they would like to see more of at the museum, 10.71% indicated a desire for more kid-friendly activities. The kid-friendly advocating visitors are also primarily returning visitors (88.9% who desire kid friendly activities).”

Those interviewed felt that the Spanish materials were positive and useful whether they speak Spanish or not.

The results of this evaluation have been really useful as we think about planning our upcoming exhibitions. In particular the usefulness of languages has come up a few times as we plan for our Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion exhibition opening next month. Do we translate to French, the designer’s native tongue? Ultimately we decided not to go that route, but mostly because we don’t think we’ll have high attendance of Francophiles (since Cardin has his own museum in Paris).

In addition to providing some good information about visitors to Frida Kahlo, the evaluation also gave us good practice as crafting questions and things to think about in terms of how to tease out nuances of how people hear about the exhibitions. As always, it’s a work-in-progress.

Without a unified CRM, the data landscape can look a little bleak.
Stephen McMillan (American, born 1949). Zabriskie Point, 1976, 1976. Aquatint on paper, sheet: 22 1/8 x 29 3/4 in. (56.2 x 75.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of ADI Gallery, 77.152.2. © artist or artist’s estate (Photo: Image courtesy of Stephen McMillan, CUR.77.152.2_StephenMcmillan_photograph.jpg)

Despite our lack of CRM, we’ve been working hard to gather data in ways we can. For example, we started a single question survey as part of our admissions process—What brought you to the Museum today?—that our front-of-house team is meant to ask as part of a casual and welcoming conversation. That, along with the zip codes we gather as part of every onsite transaction (a requirement of city funding is to report on zip codes), helps us begin to get some basic information about who is coming and why.

On top of regular focused data points like zip codes and single question surveys, we will be running an annual visitor study. We recently partnered with SightX for our research needs and have launched a baseline visitor study to get a better idea of visitor museum-going behavior and demographics. We haven’t run such a survey consistently for 3 years or more. I’m really looking forward to having that data ongoing. We’ve tried to be thoughtful in not only what questions we pose, but also how we phrase them.

In addition to our own visitor study efforts, one amazing resource we’ve been able to tap to build our data stores is our relationship with Pratt Institute School of Information and their Museums and Digital Culture graduate program in particular. In addition to our ongoing fellowship and Sydney’s recent work on ASK data, I’m able to work with the students I teach (and other professors’ classes) on projects that both give the students real-world experience and help the Museum—a true win-win. This past semester, I taught Audience Research & Evaluation. Through class work, students ran one evaluation related to the Frida Kahlo exhibition and another on our ASK app. I’ll report on the findings of these studies in a future post.

So data gathering is happening, albeit piecemeal sometimes, and we’re trying to smart about knitting it into processes and moments that make sense such as with the admissions process, or a short, three-question survey with our thank-you emails to online ticket holders. What does our data landscape really look like and what can we do with the data we do have?  I’m happy to say, that’s where a dedicated data analyst comes in. Thanks to Bloomberg Philanthropies’ ongoing support, we are able to contract a data analyst (job description forthcoming) to help us begin to make sense of all these data points, with ASK data as a pivotal element in the data landscape. I’m really looking forward to carving out time to get the big picture of all the ways we gather data and streamlining those moments. If you know of any good people, please send them our way. In the meantime, check back as we share the results of our recent visitor studies.

The original cards for the ASK activity (right) had beautiful large images on the front that people wanted as souvenirs. We redesigned them (left) to be a little less appealing, with smaller images and more text.

The Kahlo exhibition opened on February 8 and ran for thirteen weeks. In mid-April, we made an adjustment to one of our engagement activities: we changed the palm cards that were being distributed to promote our Kahlo-related tours of the Museum’s collections. The new ones had smaller images with instructions on the front, and we hoped that visitors would use them to take the tours rather than see them just as free postcards.

Did it make a difference?

Yes and no. Visitors did realize more quickly that we were offering a gallery activity through these cards. And they did pause longer to read the explanatory wall text in connection with the cards. However, their awareness of the themed app tours didn’t necessarily translate into increased participation. We were busiest during the first three weeks of the show (with 20 to 30 tour-takers per week), but for the rest of its run, we averaged about 10 tour-takers per week. Many visitors still seemed more interested in collecting multiple cards as souvenirs than in taking an app-guided tour beyond the exhibition.

The “no photography” policy within the exhibition meant that visitors were looking for another way to remember their favorite works in the show. (Photo: Jonathan Dorado)

This particular problem is hard to analyze. Based on comments visitors made to our Ambassadors at the card rack, we have a sense that visitors sometimes saw the cards as compensation for the photography ban within the show and often came back to claim them when the exhibition shop was sold out of Kahlo postcards and greeting cards, due to high demand. Visitors wanted a takeaway image, any image, and our ASK palm cards’ potential as souvenirs far outweighed the potential appeal of their engagement content.

In the meantime, we were offering a second Kahlo engagement option! This was a hunt for Kahlo quotations posted throughout the Museum. To plan this game, the ASK team consulted our curators’ list of verified Kahlo quotes and chose fifteen, some of them humorous and some more introspective. They also gathered interesting, relevant facts about Kahlo to share for each quote.

Kahlo said, “The marvelous Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten, I imagine that besides having been extraordinarily beautiful, she must have been ‘a wild one’ and a most intelligent collaborator with her husband.”

These quotes were strategically placed on all five floors of the Museum, in public areas like elevators and in collection galleries where we juxtaposed them with works of art that had some kind of connection. For example, a quotation about painting flowers was placed near a panel of Ottoman tiles with a floral motif, and a short reflection on Nefertiti was placed near two depictions of the ancient Egyptian queen in our Amarna Period gallery.

Visitors learned about the quote hunt from our ASK Ambassadors or by encountering a quote with its instructions: “Text us snapshots of Kahlo quotes from around the Museum to win a special prize.” We asked visitors to locate 12 quotes, with the exception of Mondays and Tuesdays, when only the first floor of the Museum was open for the Kahlo exhibition. On those days, we asked visitors to find eight quotes on the first floor.

Some quotes were posted in public areas: in our cafe, in elevators, on glass exit doors.

Over the course of the exhibition, nearly 900 visitors started the quote tour and approximately 100 completed it. Many of them entered into the game with full enthusiasm, including selfies in front of the quotes they found and taking the opportunity to show off their own Kahlo t-shirts or tattoos. Every winner received a prize from our Shop, including mugs or colorful totes emblazoned with Kahlo’s likeness. Since the quotes were placed around the Museum rather than within the Kahlo exhibition itself, even visitors who didn’t have tickets to see Kahlo were able to participate.

Kahlo once said, “I have not regretted the things I have done.” While we might rethink our staging of the themed tour option for future exhibitions, we still think it’s a concept we should revisit, and we know that artist quotes (and games with prizes!) will continue to receive a positive response visitors.

We have more exhibitions to come soon, so I’ll be back in a couple of weeks to share some of our ASK engagement ideas for the summer!

Jacki modeled the chat search function after the snippet search, which allows for three ways to access the information.

The chat search function has three possible ways to search through chats. The (seemingly) easiest way is to search for a particular object via its accession number. However, not all chats have the objects tagged with its accession number. That is why being able to search words or phrases in the chats (the second option) is so useful. I might not be able to search the accession number, 83.84, and pull up all of the chats for it. However, I can search “East River View with Brooklyn Bridge” or “Yvonne Jacquette” to pull up more chats where individuals were asking about this particular work. There is a third option to search Chat by ID, which is useful if I need to reference a particular chat.

Jacki also created a function to filter out the search results. This has been especially useful as of late. A significant number of visitors recently have been using ASK for Frida Kahlo themed tours or quote hunts. If I want to look at an object that was incorporated in the Frida Kahlo activities I can just filter out the past few months in my results rather than manually combing through to remove can filter out the past few months of Frida Kahlo.

There is also the option to export desired chats from the results into a JSON file. The JSON file export is super useful because the file format lets allows me to read the full chat conversations and is a great record of what I have already analyzed. This is a huge step up from copy/pasting into Google docs and will likely have future benefits that the next Fellow or researcher can explore!

Searching by text via the chat search function was often the best way to find the ASK labels.The search text is even highlighted in the results making it even easier to do a quick scan for information.

Additionally, the ability to search words or phrases was also useful for searching the in-gallery ASK label text. The object 83.84, East River View with Brooklyn Bridge, has an in-gallery label that says: “How did the artist get this view? Download our app or text … to learn more from our experts.” I used the search to pull up any chats that contain the label text to see if visitors were using the language verbatim and then what else they were looking at. 

I used the various search features to start compiling a table organized by object, which looks at the following:

• Did the visitor use the label question
• Where in the trajectory of their visit (beginning, middle, end) did they ask about this object in particular
• Did they ask other questions about this object and how many
• Did they ask about other objects, if so how many and which objects
• Did they use specifically other in-gallery label questions, if so how many and which objects? (using the question provided in the prompt or a slight variation)
• Did they ask any question about objects that have ASK? labels, if so how many and which objects? (not using the labels prompts specifically rather asking in question in general about the object that does have the label)

This process took a lot longer than I anticipated for one object alone. Unfortunately there was no way to streamline gathering this information from each chat. The most time consuming aspect was having to look up accession numbers and/or titles of different works that visitors asked about which did not get tagged in the chat or the conversation did not explicitly include the title. This highlights an overarching issue with the chat data that not everything has been tagged consistently over time especially in regards to objects asked about.

With how long it took me just to go through one object/in-gallery label and time running out of my fellowship, I wouldn’t have time to go through as many objects and chats as I would have liked. I decided to focus on a few objects that have in-gallery label questions, in-gallery generic labels, and popular objects with no labels at all. The downside is, the more popular or asked about an object the longer they take to analyze, further limiting how many I can get through.

From my very brief overview of a few objects and roughly 200 chats only one visitor used the in-gallery labels more than once. This visitor used two question labels but also asked about two objects that did not have in-gallery labels.  Additionally, from what I did look at, visitors who did use the in-gallery labels most often used them as the first object that they asked about. My hypothesis is that visitors are using the in-gallery labels to get an introduction to the app and then proceed asking questions about objects that they were interested in. This is great news, since that was the original goal of these labels: to get people using the app. More chats and objects will definitely need to be looked at to confirm this, but the foundation for going through chat data has now been established.

Over the past year I have learned a lot not just about the ASK app and its users but also that big learnings can still come from small tools. I’m going to miss working with this challenging but incredibly interesting data and I wish the best of luck to next year’s Fellow!