Audience-centred Conversations

The way to understand the needs and interests of your audiences starts by talking with them directly. There are different ways to enable these conversations, from semi-structured, open-ended or long interviews to visitor intercepts, from organising focus groups to meeting for think-aloud activities. All these tools help you to learn about who you’re designing for while giving you the space to observe what they do and how they do it.

Observatory Actions

Observatory actions are about viewing, recording, understanding thus “observing” the actions and behaviours of audiences and gather insights. Tools vary from shadowing or ‘accta’ (audience, content, context, time, activity) observation to video/photo-ethnography with the same aim to systematically trace the actions, choices, interests and behaviours of audiences without any interference. These actions are suitable for understanding audiences in both physical and digital spaces.

Journey Mapping

Whether an experience journey or a content journey mapping, this tool helps cultural institutions understand how, with which content and why online and onsite audiences interact. It’s about mapping the actions and interests of a visitor/user from the moment they hear about your institution until the moment they finish their experience. It brings not only a profound understanding of what your institution offer and its relevance for your audiences but also becomes a guidance on how to improve it.

Opportunity Mapping

Opportunity maps are tools that let project members to easily explore, understand and visualise the areas where a cultural institution can make improvements or enable innovation. The map is done by using different parameters for example territorial to international impact or types of audiences and visualisations such as 2x2 matrixes, stack or gradient circular diagrams which can be used both for gathering research outcomes or as a tool for discussion for making decisions.

ENVISION

Personas, Now and Tomorrow

Before starting any project or taking any decisions, it’s crucial to identify who you’re designing for today and to whom you would like to expand your offer. Personas, Now and Tomorrow is about creating an audience development plan by having a clear idea on their background, learning cycles, interests and context without falling into the trap of stereotyping. It makes you think beyond your current audience and consider even your relationship with other institutions, stakeholders and businesses.

Cross-sector Vision

Cross-sector Vision analysis is generally a result of an in-depth research that identifies key applications, directions, trends and partnerships from different sectors that can bring insights to shape the services, experiences and business of a cultural institution. Looking at the overall experience offer and structure of a cultural institution through a cross-sector vision helps to better respond to the expectations of contemporary audiences and prepares the institution to the future.

Co-ideation Workshops

Co-ideation Workshops brings together a group of people with different expertise, from curators, architects to archivists and art historians to involve them in the design process. Since every institution is unique in the way they are founded, operating, collecting and disseminating, it is essential to bring different perspectives on the possible design solutions and directions. These activities also establish a common ground and language to work efficiently while learning from each other.

Lean Prototyping

Lean Prototyping is all about experimenting, learning and testing ideas. It’s an effective way to make ideas tangible and start in small steps with continuous iterations while collecting feedback to make it better. Even if you work on a brochure or labels for artworks, there are ways to make them tangible for people you design for and test. For example, visual storytelling or unpolished mock-ups are great ways to gather feedback with small investments so that you can adjust the idea and test it again.

Evolve

Roadmapping

Time constraints can help to deliver projects on time but a roadmap gets you on top of the Alps. It’s a full strategic plan of how, when and with whom you’re going to work with and what the priorities are in implementing your idea. In defining a roadmap, it’s crucial to gather all the stakeholders and team members and define together the key milestones in order to move efficiently. With a roadmap, you also recognise the skills of all people involved in a project in a deeper way.

Direction Sorting

Direction sorting is a participatory activity to, on one hand, clarify and break down the attributes and features of a possible design direction, on the other hand, understand the value of the direction for an audience. Most often, the participants of the activity discuss the directions and are asked to prioritise between different possibilities keeping in mind their audiences. This activity not only helps to select a direction but also helps the researcher to gain valuable insights from the discussions.

Pilot Actions

Sometimes in order to truly understand how to select a design direction, you should plan Pilot test-actions. These actions require to fully bring into life a design direction and analyse in a longer period if it works in the way that you’ve imagined. It sounds similar to prototyping but instead brings a comprehensive analysis not only on the solution itself but also how it impacts the overall structure and resources of a cultural institution by balancing audience desirability with institutional commitments.

Experience Check-ups

Experience check-ups are about measuring the success and impact of a design solution both on an audience and business level. They help you to learn from what you’ve been doing by evaluating its effectiveness and define areas where you can make improvements. There are different tools to collect quantitate and qualitative data such as the number of visits and user stories. At Jüniör, we believe that only a mix can help you understand what is the real issue and inform your strategic planning.