Under the RIS3CAT Media Community projects co-funded by ACCIÓ, on 9 March the partners of the Engagement project presented their first results after operating for more than a year. Let us recall that this R&D&I project is led by UPF and involves on the one hand two museum entities, the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) and the Antoni Tàpies Foundation, and the another, two technology companies, Indissoluble and Mobile Media Content, along with Eurecat the Technology Centre of Catalonia. The project proposes a paradigm shift in the way museums interact with their publics and adapt to new user expectations, which requires even a transformation of the internal processes and services they offer. In addition, the ultimate goal of the project, as pointed out by Jordi Balló, project leader, “is its replicability in different cultural institutions”.

From the standpoint of improving the user experience, the project is committed to a concept of global visit whereby physical and virtual presence complement each other. Customizing the experience is one of the major challenges of the project, so the public is not regarded as a homogeneous reality and it focuses on defining different user types, envisaging different ways to visit a museum, and taking advantage of what technology can offer in every situation, all key aspects of Engagement.  Thus, as Pepe Serra, director of the MNAC, affirms,  museums will “reach the public that does not visit the museum and establish a stronger bond with those who do”.

Anna Sauri, director of the Antoni Tàpies Foundation, gave us an example of how her organization can deploy this concept of a global visit or even, as we put it in the project, expanded museum: in respect to the digital environment -before visiting the museum or during a virtual visit- creating a global network of knowledge about the work of Antoni Tàpies available to the user on a website; once at the museum, approaching the visit to the building applying this knowledge to the works on permanent display; and following the visit, developing an interactive space where users can upload all the information about their experience where links can be generated with the Foundation and content can be fed back.

The evolution of this first phase of the project in the middle of a pandemic has highlighted the importance of exploring new interactions between museums and their users. 

The pandemic has given museums the opportunity to extend the experience they offer their users through the virtual environment

Thanks to the participation of technology companies, Engagement also provides an opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies that improve the user experience, as well as further the analysis of the data generated from both the content of museum collections itself and from the interactions with users, always counting on their involvement and preserving their anonymity.

The technologies for use have opened new perspectives in the conception of collections and how they are or can be perceived by the user

Through the virtualization and digitization of museum contents, users will be able to decide how to approach their visit. In the words of Michele Marino, CEO of MMC, “the advantages of the virtual model are that it allows updates on collections, the automation of content and offering users different views of the collection. User interaction with the works in person and voice-overs break the physical barriers of reality and bring them closer to the work in complete freedom”.

Encouraging as much interaction as possible will enable tracking interests. The information and the user interface will automatically adapt based on the interests of the user

Meanwhile, Juan Roberto Vásquez, CEO of Indissoluble, proposed a personal visit based on the real-time detection of the visitor, facial recognition through interactives, and non-intrusive, natural audio accompaniment; a system that understands the user to give them the best information. He noted that “the system responds to three main areas of engagement: customization (we speak their language, we put a face to them), participation (not passive user) and reward (reward the user, establish partnerships)”.

But in order to put the user in the centre and establish a new user-museum relationship, there is a need to know and address them personally, therefore one of the project’s major challenges is to compile all traces of the user from the time they begin to interact with the museum. Eurecat is working with a log of users’ movements through the halls, the management and analysis of data derived from interaction and the user profile to be able to piece together all these data. In the words of Jordi Sans of Eurecat, we need to know what attributes, habits and interests differentiate our users to allow us to address them in a personalized way. This integrated data model will therefore allow generating personalized recommendations for users and, moreover, allow museums to evaluate their proposals, scale the model itself and provide recommendations in relation to other museums.

The project is also advancing in the conceptualization of this Engagement model and is heading towards a change in the internal organizational processes of the museum. As Pepe Serra, director of the MNAC, puts it: “Engagement directly impacts the way the museum is organized and how the team works; it involves changes in the compartmentalized dynamics of departments, horizontal management, the emergence of professional figures that did not exist; and it requires achieving the engagement of staff in relation to the institution and their own work”. In connection with this internal transformation, Anna Saurí of the Antoni Tàpies Foundation added that “Engagement is an opportunity to get the information collected from users to all areas of the museum”.

Engagement is aligned with the concept of the digital museum of the future, one that generates greater opportunities for data collection and the use of the information generated to provide greater interaction and more collaborative relations with their audiences.