Curious how the British Design Museum used data to improve the museum experience? Listen to DEN's podcast Cultuurshift season 3, episode 3: managing crowds and visitor flows with data.
Behavior changes
Josephine Chanter, deputy director of the Design Museum in London, clearly outlines the challenge for the cultural sector: “The battle for attention has completely erupted. Cultural organizations must work incredibly hard to reach people and share the stories that matter to them.” She fully embraces the use of data to gain more insight into this. “We want to respond to visitor behaviors so we can adapt accordingly.”
Movement patterns
To gain insight into how people move through the museum, visitors scan their tickets for each exhibition or hall. Not to monitor visitors, but to recognize patterns. Where does it get too crowded? Which gems are being skipped? This provides insight into whether people come only for the popular Wes Anderson exhibition or visit multiple halls. However, this revealed a significant obstacle: digital systems that do not communicate with each other.
Systems that don’t ‘talk’ to each other
Josephine Chanter shares an honest insight: at the Design Museum, different datasets and ticketing systems initially couldn’t communicate with each other. A single ticket had a different identifier than a subscription. It wasn’t possible to integrate these different types into the CRM. The result: to extract valuable insights from the data, a complete ticketing system had to be acquired, a significant investment.
But this was necessary, says Chanter: “If you don’t know what people do in the building, you can’t retain them, so this is essential business information.”
Digital strategy + 6 KPIs
Data only becomes meaningful when it is part of the organization's broader vision and mission. During a strategy review, pillars emerged under which six KPIs were defined. “These are six data points that are most important to us and that we want everyone in the organization to focus on,” explains Chanter.
Key Performance Indicator:
The first concerns staff: we want to achieve an 80% score on employee satisfaction.
Key Performance Indicator:
Increase visitor numbers from 650,000 to 800,000.
Key Performance Indicator:
Encourage visitors to spend more during their visit, for example in the shop: from seven to nine British pounds.
Key Performance Indicator:
We want to solve the deficit on the balance sheet.
Key Performance Indicator:
Visitors often rate their visit highly, but we want more people to recommend the museum to others; the NPS needs to increase.
Key Performance Indicator:
Finally, we want to achieve a 21% reduction in CO2 emissions.
Her main advice: "Ensure the digital strategy doesn’t reside in just one department but runs throughout the organization so everyone feels ownership."
Data as evidence
Not everyone immediately gets excited about the word 'data'. The solution to get people on board within your organization is simple according to Chanter: “shift the focus. Don’t present data as a cold table, but as an insight that directly helps a colleague. If a curator can see that a particular object is consistently overlooked due to a poor route layout, data suddenly becomes an ally in the creative process.”
Data then takes on the role of evidence rather than a starting point.
Curious about the episode of ‘Cultuurshift’ where Anic van Damme, Splinter Chabot, and innovation expert from the Rijksmuseum Evita Goettsch discuss this approach? In this video, you can watch the entire podcast episode.
Podcast Cultuurshift season 3
In the third season of the podcast ‘Cultuurshift’, we speak with a different international pioneer in culture and technology in each episode. Think innovations around gamification, AI, and data-driven work. How do they approach it, and what is the major benefit for their audience and organization?
Host Anic van Damme and sidekick Splinter Chabot discuss this case with an expert from the sector and ask the question: what inspiration can we draw from this innovative example in the Netherlands?
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