Should you’ve visited the Nationwide Museum of Scotland within the final 12 months, you in all probability noticed a QR code in certainly one of our exhibitions. There’s a superb likelihood you even used one! Did you get your cellphone out and scan it? Or stroll on by? Adam Coulson appears into modifications in customer behaviour in UK museums, and provides a set of design ideas for museums to make greatest use of QR codes.
The usage of QR codes in museums is a polarizing matter. These little black and white squares appear to generate sturdy emotions within the museums group. Take this tweet for instance. Some feedback are filled with reward whereas others see them as exhausting or irritating.
Right here at Nationwide Museums Scotland we’ve been trialling other ways to make use of QR codes in our interpretation and customer info. Earlier this 12 months I offered some preliminary findings to our Exhibitions & Design crew to share information round what occurs as soon as these little squares are launched into the wild. We needed to grasp how guests interact with them, and the way we will design the expertise in probably the most built-in means.
This weblog is a part of a sequence the place we purpose to work within the open, sharing what we uncover with the broader museums sector.
What’s a QR code?
Fast response (QR) codes actually aren’t new. They’ve been round for greater than 25 years and had been invented in 1994 by a Japanese automotive producer. Put merely, they’re a technique to direct folks to digital content material or providers.
In Asia they’d seen a massive take-up as a consequence of their use as a cost mechanism with widespread providers like WeChat and AliPay. In contrast, take up within the UK was typically very low till very just lately. Actually, they had been seen as a little bit of a joke in UK and US museums with many missing a significant use case for them, and museums additionally harbouring a dislike for cluttering up fastidiously thought of interpretation and messaging panels.
A wave of QR codes started showing in UK and US museums and galleries all through the later 2000s, with early adopters together with Pennsylvania’s The Mattress Manufacturing unit (2009) and Brooklyn Museum (2012). Adoption was low by the next decade, with Cuseum lamenting their terminal decline in The Life and Demise of QR codes in Museums (2016).
Analysis claimed that again then, as many as 97% of individuals didn’t know what QR codes had been. Low take up by guests was largely because of the majority of smartphones not with the ability to scan codes ‘out of the field’, as a substitute requiring you to obtain a separate app. Some guests on the time additionally referenced safety considerations and impacts on smartphone battery life as different causes to keep away from them.
So what modified?
Since 2017, QR code readers have been included in all new Android and Apple software program updates. This lowered one main barrier and meant smartphone customers had been now (technically) in a position to scan codes utilizing their smartphone digicam with out the necessity for a separate app.
By 2020 91% of lively iOS customers had entry to in-built QR code scanners, eliminating the necessity for a separate app, and it’s estimated that by 2022 QR codes will probably be accessible to at least one billion smartphones globally.
Coupled with the technical capacity to scan codes, the COVID pandemic compelled a renaissance within the UK as QR codes instantly grew to become an important instrument to soundly entry providers and content material with out bodily contact. All of us needed to learn to use them each day to entry necessary well being providers like COVID checks and COVID passes, and as soon as the hospitality sector started to open up, foods and drinks too. As one colleague put it: “You’ll study quick if that’s the way you get your gin & tonic”.
Customer sights and GLAM orgs have been utilizing them for years, however there’s little information obtainable on which to base design selections, so the examples of QR codes use at Nationwide Museums Scotland beneath are meant to fill that hole, and assist inform our interested by future design.
The Galloway Hoard exhibition
This high-profile exhibition introduced collectively the richest assortment of uncommon and distinctive Viking-age objects ever present in Britain or Eire. Happening by the summer season of 2021, it ran within the largest exhibition house within the Nationwide Museum of Scotland.
The conservation work round the objects within the hoard concerned pictures and the creation of 3D fashions. Given the continued COVID restrictions on the time, we selected to position QR codes beside the circumstances of key objects as a means for guests to entry the fashions. This meant they might manipulate and get nearer to the digital variations which was clearly inconceivable with the bodily objects themselves.
The QR codes and name to motion had been positioned on moveable stands, quite than on the circumstances themselves. We determined with our Exhibitions crew that this was the very best strategy as a consequence of timing, reliability, and the chance for these stands to additionally go on tour with the exhibition. Having the ability to transfer the stands additionally meant they could possibly be positioned to the aspect of the case to keep away from potential crowding round widespread factors within the journey, and we might reply to the customer flows on busier days.
We had constructive anecdotal suggestions from guests who loved with the ability to look nearer at particulars and textures of fastidiously labored steel (like this hen pin). The 3D fashions had been hosted and seen in full-screen mode on Sketchfab, which provided a extra seamless expertise than linking guests to a web page on our web site.
The Galloway Hoard provided us a technique to check this interplay. As a free exhibition inside the wider free-to-access museum, we had been in a position to measure how many individuals visited this gallery and evaluate with the engagement of the QR codes.
65k folks visited the exhibition and the QR codes had been scanned 26k instances. Utilizing the analytics information inside qr-code-generator.com we had been in a position to see which of the 3D scans/objects was hottest, which additionally gave us perception into the customer stream.
The Typewriter Revolution
For this exhibition we created brief movies of six typewriters in motion. The purpose was to supply guests a more in-depth look into the movement and listen to the sound of those fascinating machines. We needed so as to add a few of that unmistakable click-clacking sound of keys being pressed and letters being hammered.
Our designer created a QR code within the type of typewriter which helped combine the code itself into the content material and really feel like a part of the expertise.
We positioned 4 QR codes on case labels, and linked to video content material on bespoke touchdown pages utilizing the exhibition color palette, once more to make sure a seamless feel and appear.
The Typewriter Revolution opened in July 2021 and had 132k visits by to June 2022. In that point the QR codes had been scanned 6k instances.
Inspiring Walter Scott
We selected to combine QR codes into this smaller exhibition on the Nationwide Museum of Scotland so as to add audio right into a gallery which is often troublesome to attain. This specific house is positioned adjoining to the big Grand Gallery (the most well-liked – and noisy – house in the whole museum).
This exhibition explores what impressed Walter Scott’s tales, so we had been eager so as to add some audio so guests might hear alongside as a part of the expertise. We recorded 5 readings which had been accessible through QR codes positioned on every case label. The content material was accessible inside the exhibition, but additionally obtainable on our web site.
Because of the measurement of this exhibition, the price range solely stretched to producing audio so we revealed the content material on our web site quite than making a separate, bespoke useful resource. This meant it was a greater expertise when accessed through desktop which wasn’t very best, as guests within the gallery needed to scroll down the web page previous the header picture to play every studying.
As a small space off the Grand Gallery it’s troublesome to observe customer numbers (it’s a free-flowing house) so the QR code information has been helpful as a technique to monitor customer numbers, in addition to perceive take-up of the audio content material.
Since opening in August 2021 (11 months at time of writing) the codes have been scanned 1,060 instances.
Definitely worth the effort?
When used considerately, with person behaviour and context taken under consideration, QR codes can be well worth the effort. In response to the article ‘Causes to not hassle’, which argues that QR codes will ‘go the way in which of Betamax tapes, Zip drives and different short-lived, overhyped applied sciences’, listed here are my responses to some ‘causes to not hassle’:
“Nobody understands them“
Since Covid, this isn’t the case. I’d argue that the numbers for the Galloway Hoard exhibition particularly (65k guests, 26k QR code scans) present that guests do perceive them.
“One unhealthy QR Code impacts all others“
That is about belief. Fortunately ours is a trusted model (as museums are usually), so guests usually tend to really feel comfy scanning a QR code in a museum than in a much less reliable location. There are methods to affect this belief, resembling internet hosting QR code content material by yourself area quite than third-party websites.
“They’re not well worth the effort“
In my expertise, we solely use them in the event that they are well worth the effort. We intentionally select them the place they add one thing, and attempt to keep away from utilizing them the place one other methodology will do. We’ve proven that including layered interpretation in an exhibition signifies that guests can interact with tales in plenty of methods, and QR codes afford us the chance to offer further for individuals who need it. It’s not for everyone, however that’s okay.
QR code design ideas
Based mostly on our trials up to now, I’ve compiled a listing of issues to think about when designing a QR code expertise:
Safety & confidence
- Add a name to motion. Be clear about what is going to occur while you scan. Embody a name to motion with the code to set an expectation (ie, “Scan the QR code along with your smartphone to see the 3D object”).
- Hyperlink to your personal area. Linking to your personal area (in our case nms.ac.uk) helps give guests confidence that there’s no rip-off/spam hyperlinks (critics legitimately cite safety considerations because of the customer not know the place they’re linking to).
- Analysis highlighted battery life as a major barrier for a lot of customers so attempt to maintain the Wifi/4G burden light-weight the place doable.
Placement
- Get the sizing proper. A key issue right here is the gap from the smartphone, so a rule of thumb is to print the code at one tenth the dimensions of the gap. If the customer is more likely to be 1m from the code, it needs to be printed at 100mm x 100mm (although QR codes will be printed at 20mm x 20mm and nonetheless work).
- Make it built-in. Design and place the code in a means which appears like an built-in a part of the expertise, not only a sticker added later.
- Brief URLs. Embody a brief URL beneath the code to present folks one other likelihood to entry the content material.
- Get your angles proper. Don’t place them in awkward locations relative to the place the customer will probably be viewing from, ie inside circumstances or angled away from the viewing course.
Designing the expertise
- Don’t assume everybody will scan, as many received’t (for plenty of causes).
- Make contextual selections. Does the QR code provide a gateway to one thing worthwhile for the customer? Does it present further context, data, or viewpoint, or simply extra of the identical?
- Contemplate Picture rights / IPR. We’ve averted use of QR codes when mortgage objects have restricted picture rights, that means we’d desire guests to not use their smartphone within the exhibition.
- Contemplate customer stream. Might a carefully-placed QR code assist create more room for guests or assist keep away from over-crowding?
- Digital person journey. Can we guarantee exhibition design selections like color palette comply with by within the cellular expertise?
- Keep away from overkill. Much less is extra.
- Discourage FOMO. Keep away from including a number of info behind a code, in any other case guests might depart feeling that they didn’t see all the pieces.
Within the spirit of the check and study strategy, one former museum individual on Twitter summed it up properly: “If it’s sh*t? Take ‘em down once more. Suppose a bit, do it, consider it, change it. Repeat.”
