museumsandtheweb.com - Comments for "How do we make change? We want your answers!"

An idea for change

patterd — Wed, 01 May 2013 18:33:18 +0000

Susan,

I'm a museum-goer, and a technologist. So, I'd like to make some comments from my perspective.

A few years ago I went to the Prado Museum in Madrid. They had a nice booklet with the top "n" works from their museum. The booklet had pictures of each work, and listed the gallery where the work was on display. My wife and I (both comfortable with maps) plotted where each of those works was located on a map of the museum and planned a route that had minimal back-tracking but took us to all of the most-important works. We also plotted our path through a few of the galleries specific to works that were of interest to us. We stopped several times in rooms where there were works that caught our interest in passing.

My thought is that every physical museum should have a way to guide a new visitor past the key works (and maybe take them past a few of the works that they might find interesting).

There should be a way to let the visitor select key works they want to see (assuming they are aware of specific works, specific artists, genres, etc.) and direct them with options for visitors who can use stairs vs. ones who need elevator access.

Every museum has the data spinning around on a storage device to power such a path generator, but I've yet to see a museum offer such a service.

Offered as an idea by someone who visits a good number of museums a year.

Ideas, Work, Failure

astephan — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 01:32:02 +0000

Hi Susan,

Thanks for posting this. I wrote up a few preliminary, drafty answers off the cuff that go beyond tweet length. I'm sure I'l get some better ideas from #MW!

Where do you get new ideas?

From my smart colleagues. From riffing, brainstorming, hearing their solutions.

Also, by tinkering: writing, designing, sketching, photographing, etc. Execution is everything.

I use reframing a lot. I like to apply the “who cares?” test: Is it useful? Is it meaningful? Who cares? Putting myself in the shoes of the person looking our stuff gives me a different frame.

When do you get your best work done?

When I stop talking and just say, “what do you think?” (I don't always catch myself, but I'm getting better.) The other person usually has the answer.

Liz Neely tweeted a pic of a business card that just says STOP TALKING. Cracks me up.

How do you deal with “failure”?

By trying harder. That's not always a good strategy, though. It can mean doubling down and doing the same thing as before, except faster and with grimmer determination. I'm really intrigued by research that shows how some people, when they think they've failed, actually lose their ability to solve problems. Right now I'm working on the ability to do less in the face of failure, to create some breathing room to rethink the problem and come up with different solutions. We'll see how that goes.