Digital Stories for SDMA App
Problem
The San Diego Museum of Art app needed a way to engage visitors through powerful storytelling. There was an opportunity to bring the museum to life on a digital scale and make the museum’s artwork much more accessible and relevant to visitors.
Objective
Design digital tours that would enhance the visitor experience and engage users through storytelling.
Timeline
Apr 2015 - August 2015
Stakeholders
SDMA curators, SDMA docents, Guru project manager, Guru designers, Guru engineers
My Role: Content writer
Scope. Met with museum director, docents, and staff to get familiar with the visitor experience, establish goals, and determine storytelling opportunities
Ideation. Mapped out different visitor journeys and ideated various storytelling opportunities for each journey
Research. Inventoried all artwork on display, conducted research on each piece, and brainstormed storytelling angles
Creation. Wrote standalone “audio stories” for each work of art in the museum, and designed themed tours that weaved multiple “audio stories” to tell an overarching narrative about a particular subject
Review. Partnered with museum staff to vet audio stories for accuracy and get final sign-off
Testing. Tested audio tours on-site to ensure the experience worked as intended, and made adjustments as needed
Results
The digital stories that I designed for the SDMA app proved immensely successful with visitors (scroll down for some reviews)
SDMA app users spent 70 minutes engaging with the app
On average, 60% of app users reopened the app a week later
The success of the digital stories helped win Guru $100,000 in funds from Qualcomm Ventures
One of my digital stories
Below you’ll find an image of Kanonier Löwe by Otto Dix, which hangs at the San Diego Museum of Art. This was one of the pieces for which I created a digital story as part of the SDMA App. Visitors can walk up to the painting and use the app to hear an audio story. Scroll down to read the script (by moi!) of the audio recording that accompanies this excellent piece.
Kanonier Löwe by Otto Dix
Otto Dix, the painter of Kanonier Löwe, was fascinated with war. To understand Dix as an artist, let's look at a more contemporary one — Heath Ledger. You probably know Heath Ledger as the Joker from The Dark Knight movie. What you probably didn’t know is that Ledger thought that the only way to portray the Joker was to become The Joker. To do so, he hid away in a motel for six weeks in order to better capture the character’s psychology. This is what actors call method acting.
Well, Dix is what you might call the method artist of his time. To better illustrate war and all its ugliness, Dix decided he needed to go to war. He enlisted in 1914, the same year he painted this artwork and the same year World War I broke out. Most young men of his day would have joined out of patriotic fervor; but Dix was not just any young man. He joined to experience the harsh reality of war. He felt this was the only way he could be honest in his art.
For Kanonier Löwe, Dix drew inspiration from a fellow gunman in his squad. The gunman’s name was Löwe, hence the title. But what’s interesting is that Löwe is also German for “lion.” They say war turns boys into men, but Dix might be telling us that the brutal truth is that war turns men into beasts.
User reviews
