Hi all,
'Interesting' chat today. For what it's worth, I think Creative Spaces is a beautiful piece of work and quite an achievement - not least for the effort of will and human and political wrangling that has gone into bringing it to life (I'm hoping someone will write that case study some day...). I registered and really enjoyed using the very well thought-through interface, even though I did find it a bit hard to find stuff to put in my notebook.
My real question, though, is 'now that it exists, how would you bring it to market?'. In other words, how do we market a social web/online collections hybrid to the general public in a way which both locates it within and differentiates it from other mass-market offerings?
Some of the 'social' functionality depends on critical mass, and critical mass depends on market share. We have seen how the current crop of high-footfall services (Flickr, YouTube, eBay etc) are increasingly turning to traditional print and broadcast media, ironically enough, to give their brands the kind of solidity and credibility which the Internet still finds it hard to establish.
I have seen it said that the nationals need only divert a fraction of their millions of hits into this for it to be a success, but even then we are talking relatively low numbers in comparison to other consumer-facing services, and certainly in comparison to other social media platforms.
I don't know what proportion of the Creative Spaces project is given over to marketing, but it will be interesting to see whether it is sufficient (a) to break into the mainstream media and (b) to keep it there. What I believe we are really looking for here is our 'breakout' moment - the killer app which enables digital cultural content to cross over into the mainstream and appeal to a whole new cross-section of society who may or may not be interested in crossing the threshold of the museum itself.
Forgetting about us museum professionals for a moment and thinking about 'real' people - I think Creative Spaces enables us to start asking some interesting questions. During what part of a person's day does their behaviour correspond to the kind of activity which Creative Spaces makes possible? And how are we going to make sure that a reasonable proportion of the many millions of Internet users know that it is there to be used? What is our 'sell' (a simple unique value proposition which makes this unique and uniquely relevant to a clear user need) and how are we going to exploit every opportunity to communicate it to consumers? And how are we going to keep them coming back?
Answers on a postcard, but what seems certain is that in Creative Spaces and the few other examples of next-generation museum-based online services we have an offering that is at or near the standard where we can start to make some real inroads into the popular consciousness, and really start to test what until this point seem largely to have been assumptions about consumers and their needs. I applaud the Creative Spaces team for moving us that much further towards our breakout moment.
All best,
Nick
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Frankie Roberto
Sent: 04 March 2009 15:11
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 'Creative Spaces'
On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Jeremy wrote:
Very constructive, Frankie. Care to elaborate on the question?
Okay, so I'll admit I was being a bit provocative opening with such a short
question. What I hoped to be alluding to was that I'm not sure what the
purpose of the site is, or what user need it's fulfilling.
I'm not sure I can agree with Jeremy that the home page has a clear call to
action - I think Tony's observation that it doesn't explain anything feels
more accurate.
"Connecting with your favourite museums" seems both vague (what does
'connect' mean?) and presumptuous (some of my favourite museums are
included, but lots of them aren't).
Let's look at the next line:
"...allowing you to explore their *collections*, find like-minded
*people*and create your own
*content*."
I can already explore collections. 'like-minded' is pretty unspecific, and
finding people is what social networks are for. 'Creating your own content'
is about as generic as it comes. This isn't communicating any 'USP', and
doesn't really tell you much about what the website offers.
The next 3 calls-to-actions are a little more specific at least:
"Get creative", "Create a notebook"
It's telling here that there's a "what is a notebook?" link straight
underneath. 'Notebook' feels like a functional thing to me, rather than a
creative thing. But I can guess at what the feature might be. The issue
though is whether this fulfils any need. I don't think anyone starts out by
saying "I want to do something creative". It'd be better to provide
something to stimulate people and let creativity arise naturally (nowhere on
Flickr does it say "be creative", yet creativity happens). The next issue is
that even if I do want to be creative, and do this through collecting
images, links, notes, etc in a notebook, do I really need a new online tool
to enable this? Why don't I just use an application on my computer, which
I'm more familiar with, and which gives me more control?
"Inspire someone", "Start a group"
Group functionality is pretty common now across all sorts of social networks
and services. Yet it's rarely a key feature. Google Groups aside, I don't
think people go to Upcoming / Flickr / et al with the aim of creating a
group. Rather, groups become a way of organising content and people that's
useful when the number of contacts and content you have starts to become
unmanagable. For me they're a kind of secondary feature, so I'd shy away
from putting them on your homepage.
"Be inspired", "Watch a video"
At least this one doesn't need a "what is a video?" link :) This one needs
to give you a bit more of a clue as to what the videos are, who's created
them, and why they might be inspirational. Why not mention that you've got
videos with well-known people in them? Or better still, list a few videos
directly on the homepage.
Those are some specific comments on the individual features on the homepage,
but I can't end without coming back to the question of what connects them
all together? They read a bit like a list of random features, each of which
is familiar from other sites (groups, notebooks, videos, links) but no
overraching purpose or need which links them all together. 'Being creative'
is too vague a topic for any site to cover. The only unique thing here seems
to be the museum content, which doesn't even seem to feature that
prominently.
I appreciate that this might be for schools, or educational groups, or
something, but from the perspective of someone who just stumbles across the
site... I think there's still work to do! :)
I've been spending the last 3 days giving 'mentoring' advice to a bunch of
TV types who are pitching web ideas. Something I've been constantly
repeating is "do one thing, and do it well". Think that'd be good advice
for this project too.
Cheers,
Frankie
--
Frankie Roberto
Experience Designer, Rattle
0114 2706977
http://www.rattlecentral.com
Sent from: Byker Newcastle Upon Tyne United Kingdom.
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