Hi John,
yes actually I agree entirely. It is very important to be looking at what motivates people in their life in general terms and whether we offer anything relevant. I was more agreeing that this is something all of us are actively doing all the time.
Mind you, this is a rather large subject for my brain at 6.30 on a Friday morning...
As this is is a computer forum, maybe it's more constructive of me to suggest that there are lots of simple ways of understanding what motivates people. Content, self-identity and cultural issues are biggies and can be daunting, but in techy terms alone, it is a simple and useful thing to look at things like communcation trends and their potential impact. These can greatly inform us on how we might develop our services to keep them relevant
E.g. there have been lots of great discussions about responsive design on this list and these have come about because we are all scanning social trends like global phone and computer sales (just one example) and what such things mean for service delivery.
For example, Android has not been a huge player in the UK so far, but has been is by miles the largest smartphone operating system worldwide for a while. More recently we can see this trend starting to come our way in our user stats with Android growing from 15% to 20% of access to our website in the last year. Someone on this list mentioned the dangers of vendor lock-in to apps and operating systems. They are right.
We also have seen great discussions about optimising for on-the-go mobile access, optimising for leisurely tablet use and so on.
Anyway, yes you're right, but we are right to not get too down on ourselves. Forums like this are crammed with people helping keep services real for people :)
Andrew
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 09:11:18 +0100
From: "John Williams (NMC)"
Subject: Who could hate Museums ?
It's entirely natural that we might respond to criticism by suggesting it's misplaced or the result of ignorance or prejudice but that doesn't mean that the content of the criticism has no value.
Our Museums have target audiences in groups that do not regularly visit and who, whether we like it or not, have different expectations to those visitors who naturally relate to our collections.
We need them to visit as well.
And when they take the trouble to comment I think we ought to listen carefully.
John
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> Of Andrew Lewis
> Sent: 05 September 2013 08:41
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: MCG Digest - 3 Sep 2013 to 4 Sep 2013 (#2013-182)
>
> I'm with Danny,
>
> this guy doesn't like museums, but who cares? Many more millions of people
> do get culture and it's not like the issues about visitor-motivation and the
> need to understand what people want are new to anyone.
>
> Understanding changing needs arising from social trends etc. and developing
> services to meet to them is what we all do, all day long.
>
> Andrew
>
> Andrew Lewis
> Acting Head of Digital Media
Andrew Lewis
Digital Content Delivery Manager
Digital Media Team
Victoria and Albert Museum
South Kensington
London SW7 2RL
020 7942 2373
[log in to unmask]
www.vam.ac.uk
linkd.in/andrewlewis
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