As I mentioned yesterday, the creation of a mobile website allows us to grow, so today we are taking advantage of that by introducing a new mobile feature. Gallery Tag! is a pretty simple mobile tagging game, specifically designed for use in the gallery. Select a tag or create your own, go find works in the galleries that match, enter accession numbers and earn points and prizes.
This is an interactive tagging scavenger hunt that (we hope) motivates people to find and look at the work in the gallery. In addition to the find and look idea, there are a few other internal motivations that we’ve incorporated into the design.
Roam! One of our institutional aims is to get visitors looking across collections and that’s always a challenge in this very large building. To encourage players to cross boundaries in the building, they gain more points if they tag objects on different floors.
Crossover! One of the big issues we’ve seen with BklynMuse is that it’s chock full of information and various paths to take and that can be an overwhelming amount of choice. The recent simplifications are going to help, but we want to implement different ways to get people into that content. As players use Gallery Tag!, there are links that crossover into BklynMuse.
Convergence! All of the tags created go right back into the online collection, bridging the physical and virtual.
We’re going to do a launch meetup at this month’s Target First Saturday and I’ll post more details on that next week! In the meantime, if you are coming here with your device hit m.brooklynmuseum.org to get started!
Shelley Bernstein is the former Vice Director of Digital Engagement & Technology at the Brooklyn Museum where she spearheaded digital projects with public participation at their center. In the most recent example—ASK Brooklyn Museum—visitors ask questions using their mobile devices and experts answer in real time. She organized three award-winning projects—Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition, Split Second: Indian Paintings, GO: a community-curated open studio project—which enabled the public to participate in the exhibition process.
Shelley was named one of the 40 Under 40 in Crain's New York Business and her work on the Museum's digital strategy has been featured in the New York Times.
In 2016, Shelley joined the staff at the Barnes Foundation as the Deputy Director of Digital Initiatives and Chief Experience Officer.