Designing A History of The World

The BBC contacted us in Spring 2009 to help them think through different audience propositions for what is now A History of The World, a landmark series on Radio 4 produced in conjunction with the British Museum.  The basic premise of the programme is to provide a history of the world through objects, including 100 from the British Museum (which the radio programmes focus on), and others from regional museums. Now that the website is live, and the programmes are being broadcast (3 times a day, no less), we thought it’d be a good time to talk about some of the work we did.

The Brief

Our brief was to design a series of different propositions around an idea that would engage different audiences over the entire length project.

We designed the ideas based on:

• some use of participatory media.
• where the social object is based on the original proposition (e.g. image of museum object, metadata around the object, programme, documented visit to the museum etc.)
• having a life cycle of 18 months.
• a core use case where we can support niche audiences as ‘fans’

From thinking through the BBC brand (it’s promise to the audience) and the ‘objects’ and, of course, the audience we developed a number of strategic aims:

1. Think about the series as an idea, with the programme on Radio 4 being one of the (key) calls to action around the idea. Each of the calls to action needs to be logically related to the idea of “history of the world through objects”.
2. Think global not local. The activities coordinated with ‘BBC nations & regions‘ and their local museums should not be tempted to focus on ‘local history’, which is well-trodden ground, and instead aim to highlight the global relevance of the museum’s collections, selecting objects that are on a par with the quality and significance of those in the British Museum.
3. We should focus on attracting, rewarding and promoting a small minority of contributors who will do some extraordinary, creative, impressive activities around the objects, rather than aiming for large quantity of contributors doing small activities which deliver value in aggregate. This core group of highly engaged users create things which a wider audience can engage with in a smaller way.
4. The ideas should all be focused around creating a greater sense of contexts around the objects. This is the problem that museum objects typically suffer most from – in the gallery, and even more so online. By creating a rich set of contexts around the objects, we will be creating interest and long-term value.
5. Give the museums a voice. Whilst the programmes are about objects, and the histories they tell, one of the key assets we have is the direct involvement of both the British Museum and the local museums. We should use this by giving the museums and their curators a direct voice, talking in the first person about ‘their’ objects, their history, and their thoughts. The involvement of Neil McGregor, for instance, could be capitalised upon by recording additional web material (videos), in which he talks as himself, as as Director of the museum, rather than as narrator.
6. The TX should be the mid-point of the social process, rather than the start point. The TX needs to reflect what’s already happened, and not just be a static programme. Do this via the continuity announcements at the end of transmission, via the 10% extra allowance in the podcasts, and via webpages which are already full of activity at the time the programme goes out. To achieve this, the list of objects, and assets around them, should be published well in advance of the transmission dates.
7. The collections could be as powerful a social object as the individual things, for example the coin ‘case’ is as important as the individual coin. How things are ‘curated’ together is interesting and valuable and sometimes is the key way through which to interpret objects (within a context).

Most of these strategic objectives still seem right nine months on, albeit perhaps slightly idealistic. The objectives were really useful in focusing our thoughts to produce a long list of initial ideas:

Initial ideas

Object FAQs

Objects often prompt questions. We should let people ask these questions, and then give them answers from the curators, and perhaps any other ‘experts’ in the community. This means giving people the information they want, rather than the usual interpretation you’d find on a label.

Reverse cultural tourism

These objects were collected from around the world – how about we reverse the flow by getting tourists visiting those countries to represent the objects back out, and to report back on the local reaction.

Meet the curator events

‘Meet the curator’ events can be really powerful, but aren’t well attended. We should be organising and publicising these events in a way that encourages participation. Can we give people a reason/excuse to attend, getting over the social awkwardness of having to meet at a specific place at a specific time?

‘Your version of this object’

Get people to connect the objects to their own objects via the concept of ‘versions’. This could then form a chain of objects as you get versions of versions.

‘Rate this interpretation’

Expose the notion of having a single authoritative interpretation by allowing multiple interpretations, and getting people to vote on them or rate them.

My 10 objects

The filtering process of selecting just 100 objects is significant. We could ask people to also undertake this, by selecting 10 objects to represent ‘The History of Me’. The selection criteria is as important as the objects, and becomes a social talking point.

Touch

Museum objects are held in glass cases. The one thing everyone always wants to do is to touch them. Lets cater for this by providing ‘touch’ experiences for each of the objects, through various means.

Worthless collectables

Museum objects are inherently given ‘value’, however when people (and museums) collect things, most of the things can end up pretty worthless. Lets turn the notion of ’value’ on its head by getting people to expose their worthless collectables, and in doing so generate a discussion about ‘value’.

Collectability

The whole notion of ‘collecting’ seems deep-seated, almost instinctive – like squirrels. Is the joy of collecting more than the joy of the collection? What makes things collectable? Perhaps the collections should be social object, rather than the individual things.

Local objects, global significance

How can we get the local objects to work alongside the ‘big’ objects? There could be a disconnect here. To solve this we need to bridge the gap. The local objects should be at least as important as the big ones, if not bigger. Small museums punching above their weight.

Objects through photography

Photographs present a ‘view’ on the objects. Yet the default view of them displayed in a museum isn’t as interesting as old photos of the objects in situ, or on display in the museum. We should present the history of the object through photos of it in context.

An object’s history of being an exhibit

Many of these objects have as much history in being on display as they had for their original purpose. We should celebrate this by revealing the history of their museuology. We can do this by publishing old labels, old records, the exhibitions they’ve been in, and so on.

The podcast as amplification

The 10% extra bonus podcast material is a key opportunity. Use it to reflect and amplify the things that have already happened around the object.

‘Trading up’ the objects

Selecting 100 objects implicitly means they’re the ‘best’, somehow. We should play on this by allowing people to point to other objects which are ‘better’ in some way. The objects get ‘traded up’ (see also: One Red Paperclip).

Materials culture

Objects tell us about materials culture. But this is really hard to communicate online! We need to find ways of representing the materials of an object rather than just the aesthetics of them.

A web of objects

How can we places the objects into a web? By finding facets of them to connect them to other objects, and eventually to each other. Could you do a “7 degrees of separations” for objects?

The objects laid bare

The 100 objects will come with lots of interpretation and metadata around them. This could be a barrier to interestingness. What happens if we strip off all the metainfo? Can you still tell what it is? What kinds of questions does it provoke?

The .com view

Lets apply different views to the objects that you wouldn’t normally expect. Could you browse them like a shop, and treat them like products for sale? This might mean being able to sort by “price”, or doing a “people who used this also used this” type feature.

Putting objects into context

The big thing that is usually missing for museum objects is context. Online, this is even more so. Lets find ways of returning some context. Show the objects in use. Reconstructions. Demonstrations. Comics. Videos.

Replicate me

Replicas are a really powerful way of engaging with precious objects – they strip away all the normal problems of conservation and security. Replicas could be put into ‘working order’ (for things that would have had moving parts) or could be touched, or loaned, or bought. People could even make them themselves.

Phone a curator

Curators are a key asset of museums, in many ways far more interesting than text or online based interpretation. Make the most of this by enabling direct contact. Let people phone them, and either talk live, or leave a voice message and have them respond in a podcast.

The original collectors

Museums weren’t formed as institutions, they were formed by people. The objects were collected by a person. We should surface the information about who these people were, and why they collected them. Were they souvenirs? And what do other people collect as souvenirs today?

The asking price & the ‘shipping cost’

The one thing everyone wants to know about the object is ‘what is it worth’, and this is quantified as a ‘cost’. We should expose this (or let people value it themselves). The ’shipping cost’ is interesting too. How do you move them? How much would that cost via the Royal Mail or Parcel Force?

Sort by…

The main thing you can do with objects online that you can’t do in a museum is rearrange them. We should capitalise on these by having various ‘sort by’ options. These could even be added to by users.

Filtering the ideas

Our next step was to take this ‘brain-dump’ of initial ideas, and to filter them through the strategic aims to create a shorter set of ideas which could be worked up into user stories that captured how people would engage with them (and where and why) two weeks into the launch of the project and eighteen months after the launch.  We’ll walk through one of these in a post later this week, but in the meantime, we’d be interested to know which of these ‘raw’ ideas you find the most interesting…

• Digg this
• Bookmark on delicious