What does success look like for museum QR code usage?

Image from IWM Family in Wartime Gallery

We all know that developing ways to define, evaluate and ultimately measure the success of digital activities is an issue faced by all parts of the cultural sector.  It’s a difficult task, particularly as definitions are still fluid, and what is measured is ultimately down to the requirements of funding rather than visitor engagement.

So as part of the Social Interpretation Project we have done a lot of thinking about how to evaluate success on all three digital outputs.  For online success we have taken a lot of ques from Culture 24 lets Get Real Report.

But for Digital interactives on the gallery floor and QR codes we’ve had to be a bit more inventive. By inventive, I mean ask other people what they have done.

We’re going to try and tackle QR code success criteria first.  This is where the twitters came in.  I asked

“ Does anyone have any benchmarks for success on QR code usage that they would be willing to share with us for #socialInterp?”

And I had a great response.

First up looking at some of the scan rates of QR code use in museums.

QRpedia use at Fundació Miró

Here QR codes were placed alongside 18 of the most prominent artworks of the exhibition. These codes linked to Wikipedia articles. The sample is from October 1, 2011 – March 30, 2012 (data taken from here)

The scan rate is pretty impressive!

month	scans
OCT	2124
NOV	2293
DEC	1990
JAN	1966
FEB	2014
MAR	1994
Total scans	12381

Next is

QRpedia use at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

The Children’s Museum has four QR codes against four specific labels. Again the codes linked to Wikipedia articles. The sample data is from June – November 2011. (data taken from here)

QR code label	Scans	Average scans/day
Broad Ripple Park Carousel	1300	8.5
Captain Kidd’s Cannon	797	8
Reuben Wells (locomotive)	378	3
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis(The Museum itself!)	69	1
Total scans	2,544

These QRpedia examples, with really impressive scan numbers give QR code use in Museums hope.  However when not linked with Wikipedia, QR code usage leaves a lot to be desired.

Brooklyn Museum have done various trails with QR codes, and admitted to multiple fails, including a five fold drops in traffic.

So should we all be linking QR codes to Wikimedia?  Shelley asks “Could Wikipedia get visitors over QR code hump of technical hurdles and poor user experience?” 

But then comes another benchmark case study

QR code implementation in the Love Lace Exhibition, Powerhouse Museum

Data below is from a 4 weeks period. (data taken from here)

What’s nice here is that the Powerhouse built a bespoke app, with a QR code scanner built in, just as we are doing with IWM.  So it was really interesting to see the number of app downloads.

	iOS	Androids
Downloads	572	165
Sessions	3,126	502

When it comes to actual scans – has had 844 scans including 45 failed scans and 17 non-exhibition codes. Despite many objects not being scanned at all, 844 scans in a 4 week period is massive!

During the course of the Social Interp project we’ve had a few mental fisty cuffs about the use of QR codes.  In an post on the Social Interp Blog  I asked several questions: Are the useful? Are they just a transient technology? Are they even a technology? How do they help visitor experience? Where do they lead the visitor once they have scanned it? And ultimately who actually scans QR codes? Is it just us?

We haven’t really reached any conclusion on this, but in reality whether you love them or hate them (yes QR codes are the marmite of the digital tech museum world) the fact remains that QR codes are an incredibly cheap, easy and compelling way to provide information, get visitors interacting, and illicit responses from them.

Now I have a couple more questions to add to the QR conundrum list:

• Should all QR code content take the QRpedia approach, and utilising an already existing, well used platform?
• Will a bespoke Museum specific application solve the barriers to access when using QR codes?

Any answers or other benchmarks for QR code usage in museums would be gratefully received!

So this hasn’t really given us some clear cut success measurements, other than number of scans and number of app downloads.  You can break that down into time spent on page, shares etc.   But if we can get anywhere near the QRpedia case studies, I’ll be more than happy.

Cultural QR codes in the Wild

image from: http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/2011/01/10/decoding-art/

Prompted by a comment by Mable from Aqueducks on an earlier blog post about QR codes I thought the use of QR codes in outside spaces deserved more of a dedicated post.  Mike Ellis’ recent post about QR codes discussed how they are becoming more apparent in the real world; they are in supermarkets, on public transport, in magazines and in museums.  But I haven’t really considered the use of QR codes in the wild, wet and windy real world of outside spaces. Below are three great examples of utilisng QR codes in outside spaces. I’m sure there are many many more.

Mable shared with me work she has been doing at Llangollen Canal in Chirk Bank  with using QR codes and blue tooth transmission direct to phones.  I particularly liked that they have been using Laminated QR codes as tea coasters for the ladies who do teas in the chapel hall for visitors, a brilliant idea to encourage visitors whilst they are enjoying a cup of tea to find out more information.

Mable also discussed the issues using the technology in Outdoor environments.  There is a tendency to have patchy mobile signal coverage to start with, which is the main reason why Aqueducks tried using bluetooth transmissions.

Both are affected by trees in leaf, and particularly wet trees in leaf, so that for example a blue tooth transmitter with a given range of 2 km, will not in practice give more than 100m or so, under damp summer conditions. The positives are that small laminated prints of the QR code are unobstrusive and do not need expensive panels and posts, and can be managed by our small community group with no facilities or much funding!  This sort of interpretation is relatively cheap so available for small groups.  The blue tooth transmitters allow one to target and change for specific events too.

I think Mable highlights very well the positive and negatives to using QR codes outdoors.  To be honest I hadn’t really considered the challenges to utilising QR codes in outdoor environments before.

Manchester Art Gallery have dabbled with a pilot project in 2010 using QR codes outdoors with their Decoding Art walking tour.   20 of the city’s public monuments where the artworks have had QR codes embedded into them.  The pilot project looked to provide information about the artworks instantly to mobile devices as “It’s very easy to walk past many of Manchester’s public monuments without ever spending time thinking about who or what they’re about and why they’re there.”

Once scanned the QR code links to both audio and written information about the monuments. Martin Grimes has written an excellent post about Manchester Art Galleries experiences or using QR codes outside over on the Ukoln blog. One of the issues Martin highlighted was the ongoing concerns around the fixing of the QR labels to the public monuments. Particularly listed monuments, lead to the use of temporary vinyl labels, which may not be as aesthetically pleasing but they convey the message well enough.

Spot the QR code & speech bubble

Another use of QR codes in the wild is how the Comics Grid uses them, in almost a guerrilla style. The Comic Grid wanted people to find their blog (which has a mobile version) through curiosity.  Ernesto Priego stated that he wanted to take the blog outside its comfort zone and viceversa, tagging public spaces, events, and academic conferences with the Comics Grid.  I really like the idea of guerrilla style QR codes, there is a sense of adventure to it.  The concept of taking the Comics Grid’s blog out of its comfort zone is a nice one; a QR code certainly does that by pulling the blog into the real world.

All three examples are utilising an interesting means of conveying virtual information in outside public places.  I particularly like that small community groups like Aqueducks are experimenting with QR codes as a cheap and relatively easy way of communicating information to visitors.

Cultural QR codes in the wild are really great idea in principle, but there does seem to be a lot of problems to overcome particularly with the practical constraints of affixing QR codes outside, as well as dealing with flaky mobile signals.  More experimenting to be done methinks.

Musing on QR and Museums

Following on from my blog post about Tales of Things; Ive been thinking a lot about QR codes, partly because the QR code for my mug of tea sits in front of me and I stare at it all the time. The codes themselves are actually quite hypnotic.

So who’s doing what with QR codes currently in museums and cultural heritage sites?

It is a brilliant opportunity to extend display space, provide more object information, link to online catalogue data, and to empower the visitor to interact with the object.  I firmly believe the more interaction you have with an object, whether that be handling it, discussing it or viewing it online, the more you learn. QR codes also have an element of curiosity about them, as I said above they are hypnotic and eye catching, seeing one makes you go ‘oooooh whats that’  (well it makes me do that). What I really like about the possibilities of QR codes is that it connects the physical with the digital in real time. However, I have an iphone with a QR reader app. I am very aware that not everyone has access to the technology to do this. Perhaps spending time on QR codes and cultural heriatge is just simply reinforcing the digital divide and the idea of cultural capital: those that have, can, those that dont, cant.  A sociological, digital, cultural dsicussion for another time perhaps?

Below are a few examples that I have found of places that are currently using codes in some way.

• University of Bath Library is adding QR codes to the details you see in the results of a catalogue search. It is an interesting example, a constructivist approach to learning, enabling students to become more involved in the process.
• Manchester Art Gallery has trailed QR codes in its Remembering Slavery: Revealing History display using codes to invite visitors to submit comments on the exhibition, and listen to and read poems and comments on some of the objects.
• The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney have also used QR codes. In their case they have trailed the codes beside exhibits to take the visitor to the online catalogue entry. Seb Chan explains the technical aspects  in the here and  here.  Powerhouse have also used QR codes to give access to a free entry voucher. crafty.  They have now moved on to the idea of shortened URL’s as an alternative to QR codes.
• I like the sound of is this example from the Fenimore Art Museum, where exhibition object labels with attached QR codes directs users to their blog, where there are comments associated with that particularly object. Encouraging onsite visitors to use the codes to link to the comments section and leave their own thoughts about the objects and the exhibition. Allowing onsite visitors to participate in online conversations is brilliant; its normally the other way round trying to get the online to broaden the reach of the physical site/object.

I really like the idea of being able to leave comments about a particularly object, particularly when in this situated way, rather than visiting the website at a later date or writing a feedback card after the visit. It feels very empowering to me, instant feedback, instant achievement.  It also offers the ability for multiple perspectives to be displayed simultaneously, different layers of the story behind the object to be revealed and displayed.

What I would also like to see QR codes used for is in a large outdoor heritage site like Geevor, or up on the Roman Wall (you can get 3G signal up there I checked) – giving visitors an opportunity to find out more information and leave comments in areas where it isn’t easy to provide mounted information.  Didn’t English Heritage try something like this with text messaging up at Maiden Castle a few years ago? Hmm. I wonder if that was successful. Does anybody know?

tales of things: my mug of tea

this is my mug of tea.

Thanks to Tales of Things I can now tell the story of my mug of tea to any one who has the technology to scan the QR code attached to my mug. It’s brilliant! you can see my mug’s tale here

Tales of Things is part of a research project called TOTeM (tales of things and electronic memory) that explores social memory and the Internet of Things. Users can add stories to objects, enabling connections to be made to other people who share similar experiences. The possibilities this project brings are absolutely mind blowing.  Automatically adding context to an object! and then unleashing visitors upon it, to add their interpretation.  Just think of the possibilities this brings to museums!  An opportunity to provide a greater understanding of an object’s past, and how it connects to the present, to its surrounding environment and what the viewer thinks of it. I love it.

Plus its really simple to do (and I like the musical accompaniment) check out Trailer for Tales of Things from digitalurban on Vimeo.

One of the really interesting projects they are doing is with Oxfam. Providing context to charity shop items, putting the history back into objects with the Art Project: RememberMe.
for example: Vienna Travel Guide useful to someone, tagged given to an Oxfam shop, next person can scan the tag and find out about where its been before, and then add their own memories. brill.

I cant wait to see how the project progresses.