The Human-Centred Design program at Algonquin College was given the task of creating a demographic-specific strategy for disseminating interesting online material by the Digital Department of Ingenium, the organization that oversees Canada's museums of science and innovation. The public today benefits from the museums' evolution from primarily being showcases for history, culture, and riches to reliable knowledge centres that aid in understanding how the past has impacted the present and foster advancements in the future. To accomplish this objective, museums constantly rethink how they interact with the public. The advancement and widespread usage of technology in recent decades has contributed to this evolution in various ways. Through these technologies, museums, particularly during the pandemic, are faced with the task of figuring out how to combine virtual content in a way that supports the value of the preserved artifacts.
Our team decided to focus on Generation Z as our target demographic for this project. The older portion of Generation Z, specifically 18 to 24-year-olds, is the group least likely to engage with museums according to our Ingenium contacts, a finding which is corroborated by a 2020 report by the Canadian Heritage Information Network. We researched Gen Z characteristics, such as their behaviours, needs, and preferences in order to understand how to share the museum collections through online content in a way that would effectively engage this group.
After over three decades since the internet's inception, museums have come to see technology as a costly and overrated tool, but they now increasingly see online audiences as being just as important as physical ones. Studies have shown that as there is more digital content, there is more promotion and more foot traffic. Producing, utilizing, and reusing digital photographs is now simple thanks to digitization. The cost of creating information is minimal. Museums that lack the space to display all of their artifacts might create virtual content to display on their physical walls. The main reasons why museums are coming online are the desires and expectations of new adults, the technological generation, and the new decision-makers and spenders.
Since Generation Z are more exposed to different cultures than previous generations, they are more likely to be open to other people's views and beliefs. They often express their support for businesses that emphasize diversity. This generation is more individualistic than previous generations in their approaches to education, interpersonal interaction, and communication. Most of the time, technology controls the lives of Gen Z. This includes communication, social interactions, and leisure pursuits. In 2018, 95% of teenagers had access to a smartphone. In 2016, 82% of Year 12 students regularly accessed social media platforms.
Gen Z prefers to read any text in small chunks. Chunking is breaking down large information into smaller segments so it can be easily assimilated and understood. It also helps to manage cognitive load, preventing overload. While amateur enthusiasts of the content of museums are inclined to read all of the information on a content page, the "general public" group favoured pictures and illustrations. This is the group that most Gen Z relates to. This generation of self-learners is also more at ease digesting information online than they are in traditional educational institutions. Active learning methods like gamification, including rewards, encourage students’ participation. With high-quality online content, museums can engage their younger audiences in discourse.
We performed user and subject-matter expert interviews to supplement our findings from the secondary research. In the beginning, we conducted a survey to discover what entices or deters Gen Z from using particular platforms or sorts of online content for entertainment. Our survey received more than 40 responses, the majority of which were from Ontario. Then, in order to identify the problems, challenges, needs, and goals associated with the current online museum experiences, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 8 users and 8 subject matter experts. Later, we asked a select group of these individuals to test our ideas and proposed solutions.
Fig. 1. Primary research methods used for gaining data.
We could identify patterns and trends by putting data from the survey and the interviews into tables and graphs, which helped us understand the significance of the themes that were emerging. We classified similar traits and personalities into groups on an empathy map, which gave us direction to envision our Persona, an example Gen Z, that we could use to picture how they would respond at any point in our designed museum experience.
Fig. 2. Emerging common themes identified during research in the form of an Empathy Map.
Fig. 3. User Persona created from the analysis of research data.
After analysis, the common themes and new perspectives that we discovered showed us common characteristics Gen Zs want out of an online experience.
Fig. 4. Key findings and insights about characterisitcs that Gen Z wants out of an online experience.
Our experience principles, which would direct our planning and thinking throughout all phases of the design and manufacturing of the solution, were developed using tools after common themes had been identified. We developed these Experience Principles using the knowledge we gained from the thematic analysis.
Fig. 5. List of 7 experience principles developed to inform the design of proposed solutions.
We developed the concept of a Role-Playing Game based on the prospects we saw via the analysis of our primary and secondary research. The tabletop role-playing game was to be played on a forum like Discord where players would "meet" to play through an adventure on- or off-camera. Ingenium would create thrilling tales based on the artifacts in their museums. They could be written by RPG writers working with Ingenium historians and curators. Experienced gamers, hired professional Game Masters, or museum curators could all serve as moderators for the Genium Masters. Users would be able to freely choose who they want to be as long as it fits the story while creating their own characters using a character creation guide. Posters/ads/videos would be uploaded on Ingenium’s social media accounts where links and information would be provided for each RPG Adventure.
Fig. 6. Storyboard of the Digital Trading Card Game, one of the initially proposed interventions.
The second concept came to us during our actual visit to the museum. We made the decision to benefit from the collections that Ingenium had in their museum. We developed the idea for a Digital Trading Card Game using the museum's holdings as inspiration. Users of the mobile app would have to sign in once a week in order to access new card packs. The cards would come in various forms, from common artifacts in the collection to rare ones, and the worth of each card would be determined by the background information on the creators and histories of the individual artifacts. Users could flip their cards to discover more about the background of each artifact and gain more context from the card. By opening additional packs and exchanging cards with friends, users might increase the size of their collections. A new pack would be accessible each week, but if users wanted access to more packs, they could perform tasks like watching advertisements, going to the Ingenium website or purchasing a new pack. You could swap cards with friends while playing games, earning awards, and having fun.
For our 1st round of validation, we presented the two initial solutions discussed above. Using storyboards for each, we took the testers through how each would work from a user’s perspective, from promotion to onboarding, to activity engagement to the hooks to keep them coming back.
For the Role-playing game concept, users had to go through a detailed set of instructions including character creation before they could be a part game. It also required personnel to moderate each game in real time. Therefore, staffing and a complicated onboarding process came across as key issues for this concept. The Digital Trading Card Game was well-received by everyone and seemed like a great concept at first glance. Users compared the idea with Pokemon and WWE cards but cards based on museums’ collections were a hard sell. Unlike Pokemon and WWE, these cards did not provide the users with a feeling of nostalgia and it was hard for them to justify the value of these cards. Users felt that the initial excitement of a new offering from the museum would eventually die down and people would stop participating.
After confirming the validity of our initial two solution concepts, we identified certain problems with each. We revised the concept into a new prototype while keeping in mind the primary principle of Ingenium, Inspiring Ingenuity, as well as the characteristics that testers indicated they were seeking. The validations confirmed our experience principles, thus all that was left to do was combine the basic ideas. We took the storytelling and promotion-focused aspect of the Role-playing game concept and the collections aspect of the second intervention to create the mobile app called Myseum - Build Your Own Museum. Users would scan an object around them and then the app would find a similar artifact in Ingenium’s museum and present it to users with images and the history behind each artifact in the form of stories and videos.
Fig. 7. Introduction of the Myseum mobile app, the final proposed solution.
We then did a second round of testing with the help of an interactive prototype of the Myseum app. From our second validation, we discovered aspects that they loved about our solution concept as well as questions and recommendations.
Fig. 8. An interactive protoptype of the Myseum mobile app.
The plan is to have the application available as a free download for both iOS and Android mobile devices through their respective application stores. Once the users download the application, the users will be taken through some introductory screens that explain to the users the purpose of the application and what they can do with it.
For our solution concept, we presented a minimal viable product (MVP) because of time constraints, so it did not contain all the features we could add. The scalability section is a breakdown of the extra features and recommendations for the app.
The vast majority of interviewees and questionnaire respondents were from Ontario. The study should be expanded to include potential users from all provinces and territories in order to take into account the opinions and interests of the various regions of Canada. We didn't inquire about gender, economics, or other distinctions, or about cultural identity or backgrounds. The study would need to deliberately be conducted in several sectors within our initially defined demographic if we want to take into account the viewpoints of a more diverse audience.
Our scalability recommendations give opportunities to build in more universal strategies to make the app more accessible to different abilities and preferences for intaking information, however, accessibility would need to be looked at more thoroughly through the standards of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and the Accessible Canada Act (ACA).
If you would like, you can use the button below to access a detailed 100+ pages report for this project including the annotated references.
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