A case story about how The National Museum of Denmark have tried and failed to engage and involve users. From the least successful project - an interactive survey with serious UX flaws to a highly successful element consisting of post-its and pens. The message is to ask why instead of what or how.

2. OUTLINE
1. Presenting the National Museum of Denmark
2. Presenting “Europe Meets the World”
3. Presenting “Visitors voice”
4. What went wrong?
 The product
 The process
 The concept
5. An integrated participatory element
6. Our most successful participatory element
7. What have we learned

3. 2. THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF DENMARK
Placed in city center of Copenhagen and home to six permanent exhibitions

4. ABOUT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF DENMARK
The National Museum consists of 6 Museums placed all over Denmark
- The open air museum in Lyngby
- The Resistance Museum
- The Museum of Industrial History at Brede Works
- The Danish Music Museum
- The Frøslev Camps in the south of Denmark
- The royal tombs in Jelling
The museum is also responsible for collecting and preserving the Danish Cultural
heritage
The six museums had 1,033,071 visitors last year

5. 3. EUROPE MEETS THE WORLD
A temporary exhibition that ran for 7 months in 2012
- Coinciding with the Danish chairmanship of the EU
- Focusing on the meetings between European civilization
and the rest of the world throughout history from
ancient Greece to the present.
Quite a success when it came to publicity and number of visitors
A successful collaboration between departments in the
museum

6. THE EXHIBITION DESIGN

7. 3. VISITORS VOICE
- A digital survey posing five questions related to the themes of the
exhibition.
- In order to participate, visitors had to scan QR-codes which took
them to specially designed mobile websites.
- The answers to the five questions could be seen on a small
screen when leaving the exhibition.

8. THE FIVE QUESTIONS

9. HOW MANY PARTICIPATED?

10. AND THE REST OF THE NUMBERS…
Human Rights 398
Prejudices 361
Borders 323
Religion 479

11. WHAT WENT WRONG?
• The product
• The process
• The concept

12. USER EXPERIENCE
This is how the screen was presented in your mobile browser:

13. USER EXPERIENCE 2
Does this design make sense to you?

14. LACK OF VISIBILITY AND QR-CODE OVERLOAD
People’s attention was not drawn to the survey until they left the exhibition.
There were three different kinds of QR codes in the exhibitions
- Several codes led to texts or sound bites used for an educational program for
schools
- Some lead to videos where a curator would tell the story of an artifact
- Five codes lead to the survey
There was not sufficient light in the cubicles to actually scan all the codes

15. THE PROCESS
• An add-on to the exhibition rather than an integrated part of the exhibition
• Form over content
• So ein ding….
• Nobody was responsible for the project
• There was not enough time to test the product and correct flaws
• Nobody had any knowledge of interaction design

16. THE CONCEPT
The real problem was:
We started with how instead of why
We should have asked ourselves:
• Is it an integrated part of the exhibition? (NO)
• Does this interaction make sense to the visitor (NO)
• Why should visitors bother to take part in this survey? What is in it for
them? (Absolutely nothing)

17. A DIFFERENT SURVEY
Should we exhibit scalps?

18. ONE SIMPLE QUESTION
The box was intriguing
An integrated part of the
exhibition
Only one QR code leading to one
question
About 1000 answers

19. A SUCCESSFUL PARTICIPATORY ELEMENT
Our most successful participatory element last year:
Write a message to the
handball players and put it on the
board
Post-it and pens
A sense of purpose
Over 1600 greetings

20. WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED
To start early and appoint a project leader
That a participatory element should be an integrated part of the
exhibition
That we should put ourselves in the place of our users;
• Does our interaction have a purpose
• Does it make sense to visitors
To start at why rather than how!

21. THANK YOU!
Twitter: @Meeah79
Email: marlenemee@gmail.com
Linkedin: marlenemeeahrens