Research on 'Quality' in Online Experiences for Museum Users

Measuring Quality of Existing Online Museum Products in the Virtual Museum Portal

In-Depth Site Analysis for a Sample of Five VMC Products

Perspectives: Women Artists in North America

Figure 11: Perspectives

Subject:
Celebrates the important contributions of women in the arts from Canada, Mexico, and the United States from historical, modern, and contemporary art perspectives across cultures and periods.

Producer, Creators, Funders:
The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, and the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, as well as the Glenbow Museum, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Musée d'art de Joliette, and Louisiana State Museum.

Quality of User Experience

• Has a Helpful Hints and Information section about multimedia, music, poetry, and navigation.
• Requires downloading of QuickTime.

Potential for User Engagement

• A design that is clean and intuitive with many excellent artifact images, which are available to view at multiple sizes.
• Thematic introductions to visual artwork with many examples, which reinforce or illustrate the thesis of each theme.
• Introductions to all themes, which on their own may be less clear to those unaccustomed to the study of Visual Arts.

Engagement Factor vs. Engagement Experience

• Visitors may stay longer because there is multimedia to use and download and because there are individual pages where artwork is viewed take longer to load.
• The target audience seems to be mature and educated, with themes like "Beyond Modernity: The Vulnerable Self."

Factors that Impacted Quality in Online User Experiences

• The design and approach seems to encourage user engagement. Multiple forms of communication are offered.
• Very well designed and visually rich, the site's object-driven presentations offer many levels of interpretation. The rich images and content have helped to give this site one of the highest Duration rankings.
• Contents are directed towards a more limited audience (i.e., users who have experience with sophisticated discussions of artistic interpretation), which may explain fairly modest Engagement Factor rankings.

Framework for Creation, Development, and Production

The multimedia developer offered options, provided technical expertise, and listened to what Curators brought forward, what types of works they wanted to present, and levels of interactivity for users, then presented a model to them in which creative works rather than technology could lead content. In initial discussion of target audiences, partners were interested in levels of interactivity. Since text needed to be translated into three languages, a database model seemed most suitable (i.e., images and text could be stored only once).

Strategies for Engaging Online User

The multimedia developer tried to offer content in a variety of ways, used search filters by theme, and developed 3 language versions (English, French, and Spanish). There were different perspectives on the same works and different ways of 'drilling in' or offering users multiple entry points. Users do not have to click to see the name of the artist or artwork, and they are always given some data (like a headline in a newspaper) to enjoy the images with a short bit of information, or they can click on the artwork if they want more detail.

Challenges

Given a very limited time frame, it was difficult for the project manager to reach a consensus among partners who spoke different languages. When Curators wrote content, they often requested many changes, adding more development time, and cost for translation. Hosting the site on a remote server proved challenging for the multimedia company, who not only had to work with different Canadian and American accessibility rules, but also faced technological problems on a remote server that they had no control over.

Successes

The site is popular with publics and achieves hoped for traffic numbers. The relationship among the institutions that developed it is very strong, particularly between the Canadian museums involved (Glenbow Museum, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and Musée d'art de Joliette) and the Mexican institutions. Integrating Interns into the project was a wonderful idea and opportunity for the Interns. All of the Curators were pleased with the product, and proud of what was produced. Different countries had internal support for promoting and celebrating the product.

Use of Learning

The Canadian Ambassador launched Perspectives: Women Artists in North America during the annual Cervantino Festival in Mexico. Strong links were created between the Ministry of Culture team that worked with the project manager, and the Cervantino Festival organizers. The Musée d'art de Joliette created an on-site exhibit with their own works and the project manager created and distributed pamphlets. McMichael Canadian Art Collection created an on-site exhibit of paintings related to the Virtual Exhibit, Perspectives: Canadian Women Artists (November-February, 2003).

Feedback Messages

Patterns in overall messages during 2002: Users reported problems with QuickTime, and some frustration using the site (e.g., wanting to improve the speed of moving images at the right of the screen). The multimedia developer explained that there are different possibilities for QuickTime (e.g., Real Audio, MS Audio Player), which could render files for a variety of plug-ins.