Why we should care
If a museum is closed, it will cause less or harder access to collections & heritage to public, less educational opportunities for local communities, mass unemployment of relevant staff and others within museum ecosystem and damage to local tourism & economic development.
Insight 1 - The impacts during lockdown period
During lockdown period, museums had no income. They took the Job Retention Scheme provided by government to get financial support.
Insight 2 - Different impacts between independent museums and governmental museums
Independent museums are impacted more in the short term because they rely on visitors revenues too much. On the contrary, government museums are impacted in the long term due to the cutbacks of funding provided by government which will be transferred to key sectors.
Insight 3 - Challenges during post-crisis period
After reopening, the cost increases, but the visits number remains low. Due to the social distancing policy, it’s hard to hold family activities, accept school tours and rent out their spaces.
Insight 4 - Challenges for digital engagement
For local traditional audiences, they don't have the ability and the technology to access the digital contents produced by museums. For some small museums or the museums in the developing area, it is hard for them to produce the contents due to the limitation of resources, talents and devices.
The structure of my solution
My solution would be an association including small and independent museums. This association collaborates with producing theatre to produce short plays based on the collections and the setting of the museums. The plays not only can be viewed in the physical sites but also can be viewed through online channel. Besides this short experience, all the museums members would provide long and immersive online visiting experience.
Prototype - Physical site
The goals of the physical site experience are to redirect visitors to digital site and raise the awareness of digital contents.
Prototype - Online experience
The goal of the online experience is to improve the quality and the immersive feeling of the online experience so that the visitors redirected from physical sites can be hold and more online revenues are possible.
Storyboard
This storyboard told a story about a whole journey of a museum lover, Risa, to describe how visitors engage with all the systems I designed.