Opportunity Knocks - Museum Mentorship presentations

On 26 February M&G NSW hosted a special presentation of the 2012 Fellowship & Mentorship recipients.

In 2012, eight people from museums and galleries across NSW participated in two-week professional development placements with cultural organisations relevant to their field of work.

Each speaker talked about the benefits of undertaking a mentorship or fellowship and how they plan to implement the things that they have learned into their own work practices.

Are you interested in a mentorship, fellowship or professional placement?

MUSEUM OF HUMAN DISEASE AND AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM MENTORSHIP

DR BIRGIT HEILMANN, CURATOR
HURSTVILLE MUSEUM & GALLERY

Birgit wanted fresh ideas for developing public programs and promotional strategies associated with temporary exhibitions. In the first week of the mentorship, Birgit looked at public programs of the Museum of Human Disease, University of NSW, while in the second week she explored event and exhibition strategies at the Australian Museum.

AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM MENTORSHIP

CINDY PRYMA, PROJECT OFFICER
BRADMAN FOUNDATION

Cindy undertook a mentorship at the Australian Museum to gain knowledge in education programming using video conferencing technology. Cindy’s mentor, Karen Player, ensured her involvement at every level and went out of her way to include Cindy in the VC community of Sydney.

This is an Arts NSW devolved funding program, administered by
Museums & Galleries NSW on behalf of the NSW Government.

CEO captivates chapter

Our CEO, Michael Rolfe was invited to talk at the Southern Highlands & Illawarra Chapter of Museums Australia AGM. Doreen Lyon kindly agreed to write the following blog about the talk:

Michael Rolfe talking at the AGM.
Photo courtesy of Desmond Kennard.

The Southern Highlands & Illawarra Chapter of Museums Australia held their AGM on February 17th at the Wollondilly Heritage Centre & Museum at The Oaks. The invited guest speaker after lunch was M& G NSW CEO, Michael Rolfe. Delegates from Berrima Museum & Archives, Campbelltown & Airds Museum, Mount Kembla Heritage Centre, Lady Denman Heritage Complex at Jervis Bay, Camden and Museums Advisor Desmond Kennard joined The Oaks Historical Society President Ben Lyon in welcoming Michael. As previously requested Michael structured his address to the changes to funding for museums through Arts NSW following recent reports. 

The most recent of the reports ‘Future Frameworks; towards a strategic plan for NSW’ is currently affecting our state government’s response to our sector – especially the volunteer sector. Crucially, volunteers in small to medium museums are now seen to be part of the social capital of their communities and as such the report recommended that support is delivered through a social inclusion and community engagement model as opposed to a professional development model.

In addition, the findings underpinning the report indicated that not all museums are addressing the diversity of their communities or caring adequately for collections, so it was suggested that Centres of Excellence be explored which would support the regional collections by establishing their significance. In practice this would emphasise the involvement of the heritage sector and the local Aboriginal and ethnic communities and others who had a stake in the local culture. This model would locate significant objects in collections and highlight social inclusion and community engagement – and help to integrate museums, keeping places and galleries. 

Michael responded to all the questions and comments and advised of the present priorities including Information & Communication Technology which could fund such items as video-conferencing equipment, apps, web development/design etc. He also suggested looking for digital volunteers among young people to develop digital databases, make videos for YouTube etc. M&G NSW are developing an interactive website to include museums and galleries with their own pages. After prompting from members, Michael also emphasised the key words which are equity, access and innovation. 

Thank you Michael for your patience and courtesy.

- Doreen Lyon

We're Building a Website: Users

I want to begin with a confession. For some time I've felt guilty, perhaps even a little ashamed, about my internet use. I have access to thousands of well-written scholarly articles and interviews at the touch of a button but can't bother committing to read more than a single paragraph. Instead, I feel compelled to click everything feverishly like a five year old with a new toy, onwards and upwards through a labyrinth of pages and hyperlinks and rich media.

What's happening to me? Do I have ADD? Am I lazy? Is the internet making me even more stupid?

As it turns out, I'm just a typical user.

The typical user
When it comes to reading content on the web, we've all got ADD, all a bit lazy. Or rather, we're all task-orientated, enjoy interacting with a range of content, and wish to do everything in the shortest amount of time possible without expending effort thinking about things. Steve Krug wrote a book in 2000 on exactly this topic called Don't Make me Think in which he clearly explains that fundamentally the best user experience is one where everything on a website is self-explanatory and self-evident. 

Where am I? The current M&G Website Experience  
Along with audience research, M&G NSW has spent the last few months reorientating its priorities to learn more about what users want. This has been extremely eye opening for our organisation, revealing the perils of densely written copy, confusing navigation headings, and an unintuitive search function. 

Let's take a look at our current website from a user perspective:

The columned website design with a main menu and second tier sub menu is an effective and simple way of articulating navigation but problems quickly arise. Look what happens if you're in Exhibitions and you click on the Exhibitions Register. All of a sudden you're in Publications. 

Not a big problem but, as Steve Krug writes, confusing people's sense of place on a website is a big no no. Our interpretation of virtual space is analogous to physical space; we look for signposts and directions. This is why "breadcrumbs", the trail that you see at the top of website pages, is so important. Like in the story of Hanzel and Gretel, breadcrumbs provide a path from where you started to where you are. 

Above: An example of "breadcrumbs" on Trip Advisor.

And let's not even get into the label "Publications." What value does this present to you? We're not in the business of publishing so its strange this takes up the ultra premium place in the first tier of our menu. Why wouldn't publications be under "resources"? 

What about the search function? I'll type "Museum" in the search field and see what I get:

Excellent. 

The point I'm making is that every website is made to be USED and when a website like ours has a range of little anomylies that cause momentary confusion or undermine the user's trust, it does not fulfill its fundamental goal. 

So how do we make a usable website?

Designing a website for users
Working with Adrian Wiggins from Pure and Applied we began describing the user experience (UX) visually with simple page layouts called wireframes. These are page schematics depicting the website’s content, interface elements and navigational systems, with a focus on functionality, user behaviour and information architecture. 

Early wireframe of the public homepage. Click to enlarge.

Wireframes
Wireframes represent the interface without getting swamped in design detail, concisely articulating the user experience but allowing for rapid iterations. Adrian made prototypes of pages that offered layout suggestions and also potential types of content. After feedback he would remove, improve and rearrange items. 

In the wireframe above you can see the homepage displays event information, social media updates and quirky items like Object of the Day and Little Known Fact. It also clearly displays access to a map and database of museums, galleries and Aboriginal cultural centres in NSW. 

Our discussions with Adrian ranged from broad conceptual discussions and strategic goals to the nitty gritty details like button placement and menu labels. At every point we needed to meet a simple criteria: Could a user come to our Homepage and know exactly what to do without thinking?

By the end of January, Adrian had compiled an 90+ page document that provided a blueprint for Toben (the designers) and Interaction Consortium (the engineers) to begin building the new website. 

A Typical User?

At the beginning of this post I described the "typical user". Apart from the broad generalizations about UX, most users are an idiosyncratic, contradictory bunch who will respond to webpages in ways that designers and developers never imagined. M&G can hypothesize about user needs till the cows come home but its meaningless until we actually test the website. 

Further information on website user experience:

Steve Krug's website: Advanced Common Sense

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

Nielsen Norman Group

This blog was updated on March 28 2013.

Opportunity Knocks

Last Tuesday on 26 February M&G NSW hosted a special presentation of the 2012 Fellowship & Mentorship recipients.

In 2012, eight people from museums and galleries across NSW participated in two-week professional development placements with cultural organisations relevant to their field of work.

Each speaker talked about the benefits of undertaking a mentorship or fellowship and how they plan to implement the things that they have learned into their own work practices.

Are you interested in a mentorship, fellowship or professional placement?

HOLLY WILLIAMS
PROGRAM COORDINATOR AND ASSISTANT CURATOR
UTS GALLERY

Recognising a need to expand her critical and conceptual understanding of contemporary curation in practice, Holly sought a mentorship at the Museum of Old and New Art. Working closely with the Museum’s curators provided Holly with a range of new methodologies, knowledge and inspiration as well as confidence to be ambitious in her own curatorial practice.

BEN MESSIH
ADMINISTRATION COORDINATOR
HAZELHURST REGIONAL GALLERY & ARTS CENTRE

In selecting a mentorship with the Education and Public Programs area of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Ben sought to develop skills and understanding across volunteer engagement, access and youth programming. Involvement in NGA programs such as the Big Draw, Art and Alzheimer’s and Touch and Draw, provided Ben with a wealth of skills, knowledge and experience to take back to Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre.

This is an Arts NSW devolved funding program, administered by Museums & Galleries NSW on behalf of the NSW Government.