Thursday, April 9, 2009
omegle.com 4/9/2009 1200pm
Monday, April 6, 2009
Something a bit different: The quarters game
I joined forces with Kelly and Katie and devised a scavenger hunt style game based on a pile of Canadian and American currency. The game was extremely simple: we set a pile of Canadian and American coins on the ground near the Northern Trails exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo with the following four instructions:
- Take a coin.
- Find the animal.
- Ask for help (if you need it)
- Give the coin to someone else!
Some people were confused by the game and asked those around them if they knew what the game was all about and who set it up. Others, particularly children, were totally into reading the rules and selecting a coin to explore the zoo with.
I am still battling with the value of this game. I know it accomplished a few things like helping people explore the Zoo, and prompting social interaction, but it didn't do much for the Zoo's mission: saving animals and their habitats through conservation leadership and engaging experiences, inspiring people to learn, care and act.
We have been talking a great deal about social objects as things that draw individuals together, which is great, but I feel like something is missing. So, let me try to fill this gap by introducing a new concept: the focus object. A focus object is something that gives an individual a reason to do something; the object focuses the individual's attention toward a specific task or activity, like finding an animal or talking to someone else.
In the quarters game the coin itself wasn't inherently social (although currency is a part of many social interactions). Rather, the coin focused the players on a specific objective (find the caribou) which may have allowed for a richer, more potent zoo experience. The social aspects of the game (ask for help, give the coin to another) were secondary to finding the animal. The coin itself is a small prize for achieving the objective, but what is more important is that the player found the animal and (hopefully) learned something because they were focused on completing the game.
Before we set up the quarters game at the Northern Trails exhibit, we tried it out with a family near the Raptor Center. The Raptor Center is basically a fenced-off field in which Zoo keepers handle predatory birds before an audience. We approached a family of four with the new Idaho state quarter and asked if they would help us figure out what kind of bird was on it. We gave the quarter to a young boy who approached a neighboring family to ask if they could identify the bird. Unsuccessful, the boy returned to us and we suggested that he ask a nearby zoo keeper. The boy was nervous, but his parents were really into the game at that point and led him up to te front of the crowd to ask his question. It turned out that the zoo keeper knew about the idaho quarter, and that the bird she was holding, a peregrin falcon, was the bird featured on the quarter. The boy was really excited by his discovery and the parents thought the game was pretty cool. We told the boy that he could keep the quarter and distributed stickers. Everyone seemed to come away from the game really happy.
In this situation, the boy was given a specific task with a variety of avenues for completion. He chose to ask other visitors for the information that he needed, but he could have looked around for signs or looked the answer up on dad's iphone. Once the task was completed, the boy recieved a prize. While the experience could have occurred without the coin, the quarter focused the boy on a specific goal and gave him a reason to interact with others.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Facespacetwitterverse
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Strategic Goal for NHM
Friday, March 20, 2009
Home Broadband Adoption
This study by Pew Internet is extremely interesting. According to Pew, the number of American homes with a broadband Internet connection has risen to 55% from 47% in 2007. Growth in this area is important for a number of reasons, but what is unsettling about the report is the indication that low-income Americans are not purchasing broadband subscriptions. Indeed, according to this study only 25% of Americans earning less than $20,000 annually have broadband access at home, down from 28% in 2007.
A heartening figure is that half of Americans between the age of 50 and 65 have broadband in their home, and this group seems to be seeing the most growth among all web 2 platforms recently.Finally, 27% of Americans do not have any Internet access in their homes. These people tend to be both older (over 65) and poorer (earning less than $20,000 annually).
What does all of this mean? Well, two things:
- Some of the hardest people for museums to reach are those with small household incomes. While museums tend to be inexpensive and welcoming to everyone, even those who cannot pay (See the Seattle Art Museum's recent ad campaign - "Pay what you can"), most visitors do not fall into this category. So if they don't come, and they don't have Internet access, how do we talk to them? How do we serve them?
- The highest rate of growth is seen among middle income, middle aged individuals. Museums already do a good job of reaching these people through traditional means: direct mail, advertising, e-mail; but this group is also quickly engaging with new social technologies such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, meaning they want to be exposed to more people, they want to be more connected to their interests, and they want to have a more intense experience online.
If a museum communicator were to take the path of least resistance, they would spend a great deal of their time building engaging web content for those people who really want that intense experience, and who are really vocal about it. But as quickly as this group is adopting these systems and seeking out ways to be engaged, and as glamorous as the projects created to please them are, they are a minority group who are probably already engaged. Would it not be more useful to spend those resources on under-served audiences?
What we really need to do is do both. We need to develop the fantastic, award winning, glamorous online content that the growing Internet-using public wants. But we also need to find ways to effectively reach people who don't use the Internet, don't visit museums, and don't have the resources to financially support the organization.
Part 1: Introductions
Bibliography
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