We are incredibly excited that Bloomberg Philanthropies has funded a three-year initiative as part of Bloomberg Connects and it gives us the opportunity to significantly improve…
Read MoreAs Shelley introduced in her last post, we have the very ambitious goal of overhauling our visitor experience through an initiative funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies…
Read MoreA series of internal meetings got us set on the path for this project, but we wanted to test it with our visitors. To do…
Read MoreAs Sara mentioned in her previous posts, we’ve been careful in this project to let visitor need pave the way toward an idea. It was…
Read MoreIf you’ve been reading the blog lately you know we’ve been taking stock of our digital efforts and making considerable changes. I’ve been discussing what’s not…
Read More“Three Simple Truths” from The Agile Samurai by Jonathan Rasmussen: 1. It is impossible to gather all the requirements at the beginning of a project….
Read MoreIn previous Bloomberg Connects blog posts we’ve described the iterative process of determining how we can engage the visitor, enhancing their museum experience. The ASK app (our…
Read MoreWhen Apple released iOS7 in 2013 one of the new features introduced was iBeacon. This technology would now enable Apple devices to pick up broadcasting…
Read MoreWhen I started as Web Designer for the museum in January, I assumed I had been hired for a website redesign. Rookie mistake. As you’ve…
Read MoreBrian and Jennie have been talking about our forthcoming mobile application, which is one of the public facing components of our Bloomberg Connects project, but…
Read MoreAs Shelley mentioned in her previous post, we’ve tweaked our comment kiosks over the past year or so, shifting them to an ask functionality only…
Read MoreIn getting our ASK iPad pilot into full swing for Bloomberg Connects we needed to nail down how we were going to present the answers…
Read MoreI was very excited by the prospect of user testing in the field when I started working on the Bloomberg Connects project. As a web…
Read MoreEarlier this week I covered how we have been testing the ASK app internally. Today I am going to talk about how we user tested…
Read MoreBy and large, most software in the world is made to a spec enshrined into immutability, then interpreted differently by various parts of the teams…
Read MoreIn the web development world, RESTish APIs (Application Programming Interface) have slowly become the de facto standard by which different computing systems are used to…
Read MoreFrom the outset we knew that the dashboard—the web application our audience engagement team will use to answer incoming questions—was going to be a huge…
Read MoreIn previous blog posts we’ve discussed the results of our initial user testing. In this blog post we’ll talk about the process and challenges of getting…
Read MoreEvery year a gathering of hackers and information security professionals convene in Washington, DC to discuss how awful and broken the state of computer security…
Read MoreWe are excited to announce that the Brooklyn based design firm, SITU Studio, will be working with us to create a new, more friendly and…
Read MoreThe dashboard—the web application our audience engagement team will use to answer incoming questions—is a complex application with many parts and before we hit the…
Read MoreLocation aware technology as part of Bloomberg Connects is pretty vital. We use it to tell the staff answering questions which gallery a visitor is standing…
Read More1 + 1 = 2? Obvious right? How about (2 + 2 x 4)^2? That’s a little more complicated but not so bad either. Over…
Read MoreOn the surface, it might seem that our Bloomberg Connects project is all about tech. After all, this particular Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative is specifically for…
Read MoreI’ve just joined the Bloomberg Connects project as the Audience Engagement Lead. I will be heading the team that will be answering inquiries from visitors…
Read MoreThe most basic goal of the ASK app is to connect visitors to works of art in the museum. Although the conduit for this connection…
Read MoreWe have an incredible opportunity in front of us; the folks who will be using our ASK app are coming through the door every day, so we…
Read MoreThe ASK mobile app has gone through many design iterations and has continually evolved in a quest to to offer an exceptional user experience. In…
Read MoreThe most passionate debates in our office have centered around how we are using geofencing in our upcoming app to present different information to users dependent upon…
Read MoreI am happy to announce that we’ve identified and hired six individuals who are knowledgeable, experienced at connecting people with art, and excited to take…
Read MoreASK is a tool that allows any museum visitor using the Museum’s app to have the opportunity to be in direct and immediate contact with…
Read MoreI know that everyone on the team agrees—spending time learning about the collection is a privilege, an honor, and a lot of fun. Training started…
Read MoreOur ASK team has a number of exciting challenges ahead of them. How do you communicate information about art in an informed and engaging way…
Read MoreAs we march toward our June launch for ASK, it’s a good moment to look back at some of the issues we’ve faced along the way….
Read MoreIn my previous post, I talked a lot about agile development and where we failed it. Agile has also thrown us some serious curves in…
Read MoreWhen you’ve got any tool that is designed to answer questions the danger is that people think it’s an automated system; with ASK we need to…
Read MoreAs I introduced in a previous post, SITU Studio was brought on board to design a mobile, flexible, and temporary set of furniture components that…
Read MoreLast month we had the pleasure of introducing the six members of our audience engagement team, the specialists who will be engaging with visitors via…
Read MoreIn every project there’s always a moment where the timeline starts to shrink. You start to look at your launch date and the to do list (ours is…
Read MoreAs you’ve been reading, ASK Brooklyn Museum isn’t just about an app—it’s an initiative that seeks to re-envision our visitor experience from top to bottom. That “top”…
Read MoreShelley and I like to cast a wide net when looking for inspiration and ideas, often looking outside the museum sector from the customer experience…
Read MoreWhen we first began thinking about the lobby reconfiguration, the need for flexible and moveable was paramount and all of our discussions with the design…
Read MoreWe’ve talked a lot about how user expectations helped shape our implementation. There are times when it’s incredibly valuable to listen to your users, but there…
Read MoreAt the Brooklyn Museum, we like to take inspiration from many things. After recently watching “Mad Max: Fury Road,” we realized to make our servers…
Read MoreSara and I couldn’t be happier to have ASK featured on Museum 2.0, so instead of blogging our own progress this week we’ll point you…
Read MoreWhat is the pedagogy of a text message conversation? Can you actually have a pedagogy of texting? If so, what does it look like? How…
Read MoreIn my last post, I discussed our “opening response” and slight tweaks to make that a better experience. Our “first response” (the first message the…
Read MoreIf you think about it, building a project is fairly straightforward. It’s a one way street of sorts; a controlled process with steps involved, tests we can run, and timelines…
Read MorePerhaps its the nature of an agile project, or just this agile project, but at each stage of ASK Brooklyn Museum we find ourselves facing…
Read MoreKnowing what we know about our visitors, we figured pretty early on that we would need to offer face time with staff as part of…
Read MoreWe all struggle with how to measure success. We’re thinking a lot about this right now as we begin to put the pieces together from…
Read MoreAs summer draws to a close, so does our testing for the location of our ASK team. You may remember the results from our earlier testing in…
Read MoreThings have been pretty quiet over here for a while—have you noticed? We had been blogging our progress on ASK weekly and in my last post…
Read MoreWe developed ASK based on the premise (determined by over a year’s worth of pilot projects) that our visitors want to talk about art with…
Read MoreIn our last post, Sara discussed our ongoing definition and refinement of the ASK app’s engagement goals and our recent collaborative workshop with some of…
Read MoreI’m sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that getting out of your own head every once in a while can have great benefits. We’ve…
Read MoreIn one of my previous posts, way back in March 2015, I discussed our initial plans for a shared research database (an “ASK wiki”) which…
Read MoreIt’s been just over a year since I wrote about the realities of installing ibeacon to scale. Our ASK app, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, has been active…
Read MoreOur Android release is coming in April. I’m often asked about our strategy to expand into Android when 74% of our users are on iOS…
Read MoreAs reported earlier, the Android version of our ASK app is due to launch in April. For the most part, the app will look and…
Read MoreHard to believe that it’s been a full year since we began the initial hiring process for our ASK team. We’ve accomplished so much in…
Read MoreAs the ASK Team gears up for the app’s Android launch in April and expands to two full-time members and four part-time members, it seems…
Read MoreASK Brooklyn Museum for Android is now available on Google Play. We had one early quandary, but this was a fairly straightforward development process. That is, until we…
Read MoreIt’s been a year since the original ASK team arrived at the Museum, and we’ve been reflecting on all the ways ASK has evolved over…
Read MoreEvery second counts when the ASK team is responding to visitor questions. With that in mind, a few weeks ago we looked into how we…
Read MoreA number of things happen after a visitor has a chat with our ASK team. At the end of each day, the ASK team takes the…
Read MoreExtremely smart people dedicated to the field of machine learning have made tools that are not only better, but far more accessible than they have…
Read MoreIf you’ve been following our posts lately, you’ve noticed our tech team has been doing some amazing behind-the-scenes work in anticipation of our Android launch…
Read MoreI’m delighted to share that my suitcase was a little bit heavier on my return trip from the annual meeting of the American Alliance of…
Read MoreI know it’s been pretty much radio silence here since my last post about the MUSE Awards, but rest-assured, we have been busy! Over the…
Read MoreIf you’ve been following our blog, you know we spend a great deal of time focusing on getting our ASK app in more people’s hands….
Read MoreOur entire ASK program has been built upon regular user testing and evaluation, which we’ve always completed ourselves…until now. Since we’ve been trying for over…
Read MoreIn my last post I wrote about our process for deciding which collection highlights to include in ASK’s new self-guided tour, titled Highlights and Hidden Gems….
Read MoreIf you’ve ever visited the Brooklyn Museum on a Target First Saturday, you know what a special experience we try to provide for our visitors….
Read MoreIn a recent conversation with colleagues from the Peabody Essex Museum, Sara and I fielded a question that frequently arises: which works of art do…
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