User Experience
What do the Users thing about Talking Statues?
After the launch of Talking Statues in Copenhagen in 2013, the project was launched in London, the RCMG School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester started fieldwork to collect evidence of the user experience of Talking Statues through field and desk research. 190 surveys were completed with users and 290 with non-users across the twelve Talking Statues. The London project consisted of 15 statues, including Peter Pan, Queen Victoria, Dick Whittington’s Cat, The Goat, Hodge the Cat, Isaac Newton, and Sherlock Holmes, among others.
The project in London was developed by Sing London, following the same general concept but without video and adding a QR code as an extra device and the response was very positive: The public responded enthusiastically to Talking Statues. Users were captivated by the novel and engaging concept that enabled statues to ‘talk’ to them via a smartphone (Dodd, Hopes, Tseliou, Jones). The RCMG report focuses on people’s experiences with talking statues, which is its most crucial subject. The Talking Statues in London were well-liked, and between August, when the project started, and November, when it ended, the statues had nearly 20,000 “hits” or “scans “in those first few months.
Nearly 80% of Talking Statues users, according to the report, agreed that “using NFC/QR tags made the experience more enjoyable,” which suggests that people were pleased with the initiative. The majority of users (85%) were comfortable visiting cultural institutions including museums, galleries, libraries, and archives because they were self-assured cultural consumers (Dodd, Hopes, Tseliou, Jones ). (Dodd, Hopes, Tseliou, Jones).
The project in London received a lot of attention from media outlets such as BBC and CNN, but the interesting thing about the project is that it actually ‘speaks for itself,’ so to speak. This means that signs on the statue capture the curiosity of the passersby, who then scan the signs and take part in an experience. One of the questions RCMG asked in the report was, “Why did users decide to visit a particular statue?” Based on research, RCMG determined that the majority of those who scan a statue do so spontaneously; they see the statue without having planned to pay a visit.
The majority encountered the statue as they were ‘passing by’ (67 percent) and a further 20 percent were interested in the project and looking for statues generally. Thirteen percent made a conscious decision to visit a specific statue because of their interest in the character, theme, sculpture, actor or writer. (…) The audio content of the Talking Statues was greatly appreciated by users – an impressive 91 percent agreed that the content was interesting (Dodd, Hopes, Tseliou, Jones p.23). The signage and use of the QR code have enabled the project to capture people who do not know the project, and has certainly been one of the most essential reasons why ‘passing by’ captures up to 67 percent of users. We can see across project locations that the signage significantly helps in getting people to use the project.