Vivid/Heartbeat Trends Presentation 25 September

Went to this great session today organised for clients by market research consultants Heartbeat Trends and Vivid. The session was looking at trends based on both quantitative and qualitative research. Here are my notes.

Heartbeat Trends What's Next Study:

• Gen X and Gen Y are different – can't speak to them all the same
  
• Kidfluence: Gen X often lumped together but in reality are very different, by 2011 most couples will not have children
  
• Better to divide those with kids and those without – as are vastly different, cannot target both using the same strategy
  
• Glass wall dividing work and family will break as employers need to recognise that their male workers are active fathers
  
• Division between work and family life is striking fatheres and they are starting to think more like mothers in regards to kids, esp. when at work
  
• Little Emperors: people say they want big families, but what they want to provide means they really can only have one child and therefore this new generatioon will be even more spoiled. Single child families are on the rise, these kids will be a more driven, confident and empowered generation than today's kids. Current Gen Y will be nothing compared to little emperors! I want it and I want it now
  
• Future of health: discontent with healthcare system, expectation that they will be treated straight away – no waiting
  
• Future food: a lot more people are growing their own food in order to feel connected to the earth, accessible gardens will be on the rise, local green grocers – people are really thinking about where food comes from and where food does not come from
  
• Green is good: everyone doing something and all have inconsistencies in their behaviour, the water issue has galvanised Australians, parents are the most passionate of all and want to instil in their kids responsible behaviour and understanding
  
• Most people are doing something, e.g. 66% of Victorian households are composting and vast majority of Australians are recycling, people can name what they're doing, however are they really? The next study will look at actual behaviour
  

Heartbeat Trends Gen Y Living Needs Study:

• Live in a very secular society
  
• Affiliation beyond inner circle – adults (Boomers etc) fear that language is being lost and the way Gen Y communicates is not real communication. For Gen Y it's about true communication in different forms. Need to remember that language has always and is always changing and will continue to do so
  
• E-filliation: Gen Y have affiliation 24/7 and is borderless, are emotionally powerful relationships, less guarded and more open in communication as won't see them face-to-face so feel comfortable doing this. Works in active and passive ways, in passive way remind Gen y that they are affiliated, confirmation that someone cares even if just a text message notification. It is quantity not quality that counts
  
• Easy friendships, online connections
  
• Questing (philanthropy) behaviour, armchair activism, support social issues
  
• Status: influence of American culture, look at change in the TV show 90201 – when it was on 10 (??) years ago it was an aspirational show, now it seems we can all live like that now; Gen Y a conspicuous generation, a move away from Australians egalitarian value – more hedonistic
  
• Release: an antidote, explosive release –vent frustrations and lose control. The "Soprano Syndrome" – kind of cool with a great lifestyle. They can be quite violnet
  
• What are their media choices?? Are pushing the boundaries to extremes. They love programs that push buttons on social sensitivities (Family Guy, South Park are examples of this)
  
• Constantly change and they are are masters of change
  

Heartbeat Trends New Women Clutterbuster Study:

• What is cutting through all the advertising for women?
  
• Let your guard down: women are sceptical about claims and very savvy and don't take it as face value. They love catalogues, therefore should be more magazine-like, women find them a compelling medium and soemthing they take ythe tim to read, are doing these behaviours online at Lasoo.com where you can search and compare catalogues, they want to beat retailers at their own game
  
• Engage in permission marketing: Brand Power® style is what they want
  
• News sells – if you have genuine news they will listen, cut to the chase (don't like Zoot Review® ads for example as not "authentic")
  
• Advice from a friend – word of mouth is a powerful influence on women, they now regard Sally from Brand Power® as dependable advice, not pushing and likeable, friendly, approachable (Lesson: choose a celebrity this way – someone that people feel if you run across them in the street they'll stop for a chat. They like nice people)
  
• Drop their guard when they are not the obvious target for the ad
  
• Love seeing active and involved men in advertising
  
• Family time: let go and make us laugh, ads should show us having fun as families and being together
  
• Family life is seldom perfect and should be shown as such in ads, women like to see "aspirational reality", need to show the mess, like to see stuff-ups and imperfections. The IKEA and Cottee's cordial ads were cited as good examples of this
  
• Inclusivity: single parents are the biggest minority in Australia and they turn off when seeing the "perfect family" in ads as it's not them
  
• Moral compass: they have strong moral values. However, don't want TV junk food ads banned as they see managing that issue as their role as mothers, the one area they did want looked at was over-sexualisation of children and body image
  

And that's when I had to leave – fantastic session guys!

Museums Australia (Victoria) Education Conference 17 September

Attended one day of this three day event. Was really good and here are my notes.

Brett McLennan, ACMI, the twitch response:

• works actively and with agility – rapid feedback
  
• students and young people adapting to notion of fast response – they still have different learning styles, but are all processing small bits of information rapidly
  
• a sound byte generation – don't necessarily go deeper into content
  
• need to build programs that combine twitch response and the heavy lifting mode – to dive more deeply into what's there and apply that knowledge back to other areas
  
• dealing with new generation 'readers', they expect/demand:
  
  • dynamic immersive experiences
    
  • texts that enable them to be innovative and creative
    
  • immediate feedback – including opportune for engagement and debate
    
  • this challenge faced by all generations not only this one
    
  • they network differently to what has gone before – Facebook, Bebo and MySpace are good examples of this
    

Angelina Russo, Social Media and Cultural Institutions, Engagement, Experience, Environment, Evaluation:

• today's museums are opening up more to audiences and recognising that museums are social experiences
  
• participation often on the museum's terms
  
• sites where people are already talking about you on blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos etc uploading their own content and are seen by the world
  
• peer networks, e.g. Amazon
  
• discussed the Engaging Social Media research project
  
• Distributed innovation and co-creation – paradigm shift for museums, but not necessarily a new idea or way of working
  
• Value networks
  
• Future?
  
  • Connecting cultural experiences with boarder experience economies
    
  • Creating new knowledge and networks which support co-creation
    
  • Evaluating the experience – socially, culturally and economically
    

My paper – in the interests of climate change and reducing consumption I re-purposed our Museums and the Web 2008 paper so have a look at that...

Education programs sharing session

Benalla Art Gallery, DEECD and Hume Region – program that any teacher can facilitate back in the in school, inquiry-based and critical thinking skills, encourage them to think more deeply about artworks in creating their response drawing on a large knowledge base. Used Intel thinking tools, online graphic organiser sites. Sounded like a great program and reminded me how wonderfully creative, imaginative and clever young people are. Impressed with the way the project drew on materials across a range of museums and galleries and using a wiki as a way to organise and disseminate the information for teachers and students. Finished with a great quote form the subject of the artist Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop I have a conviction that it's only when you are put at full stretch that you can realise your full potential. How true!

SA Maritime Museum outreach program, Treasures of the Sea – an audio trail designed to promote key messages of the Maritime Museum and engage students with new technologies. I'm constantly inspired by people that are a section of one person and doing cool things for their audiences.

Queensland Museum Teachers-in-Residence program – seconded teachers programs are a good way forward. Talked about getting the QM website more interactive and compliant. QM education staff role to work with senior curators to understand what they're doing and then present information in engaging ways for students. Discussed three programs Mangrove Challenge; Refugee Stories and the Disease Detective. Liked the way that David explained how the staff all learned about this web stuff together – they weren't experts in technology but experts on pedagogy. Good one David!

Paul Howard Experiences at TATE Modern – development of an online community grid that tapped into an already existing community. Wanted also to extend audience reach beyond the physical site and develop new audiences. Talked about the benefits of doing stuff online through being able to re-visit the site and for curators t be able to adapt collections and material to suit the evolving needs of the group.

Ice e-mystery, TMAG – looking at ways to bring content to people who can't get to Antarctica, give interesting work and ideas to students that done normally have that access that is based on science and developing literacy skills. Also about promoting international collaboration and understanding. Connected the physical and online environments by encouraging them to visit TMAG exhibition. Another inspiring story of museum staff working creatively with little or no resource using free tools available on the web (in this case Wordpress) and seeking funding from different sources.

Models of Museum Visiting

This question from Ido Beja, Haifa University (via Facebook!): My name is Ido, I'm a student from Haifa University, and I'm doing some research about visitors in museums with hope to build a system for groups of visitors in museums based on group modeling. I saw the abstract of your article "Developing a model of museum visiting" - can you please sent me hard copy of the article?

Hi Ido, I did indeed write a paper on this topic in 2001, presenting it at a Museums Australia conference in Canberra. Basically the study involved a series of exit surveys conducted from November 1999 to January 2001 with visitors to the Australian Museum, Sydney. Questions were designed to see what factors identified from the literature influenced reasons given for visiting museums and galleries generally, and the Australian Museum in particular. 413 visitors were asked to rate eleven indicators on a 5-point Likert-scale, with 1 being low and 5 high. From both looking at the data and a literature review I developed a model of museum visiting which included the following five highest rating factors (in order):

• experiencing something new
  
• entertainment
  
• learning
  
• the interests of children/family
  
• doing something worthwhile in leisure
  

There was not much discrimination between factors based on the relatively small variation between standard deviations (from 1.04 to 1.51), which suggested to me that these are probably the main drivers for visitors to museums.

The model I proposed is below. This is further explained in the paper you asked about, which I have posted on my Audience Research wiki (go down the page to find it).

I haven't re-looked at this for awhile now so be interested in any feedback.

 

Museum Studies Programs in Australia

This from Tzu Yu Chiu, Taipei: Another thing is that I am also researching the related training programmes designed for museum professional and wonders whether I could find those from the related organisations or associations in Australia. I might start from your blog and hope figure out some information we want on some websites.

Since you are kind enough to start with my blog Tzu Yu though I'd better actually post something! Here's the courses I know of in Australia:

• Museum Studies at University of Sydney – they have a unit of work on evaluation called Museum Research Methods
  
• University of Queensland Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies – there looks to be a few subjects that may include evaluation, especially at a community engagement level
  
• Curatorial and Museum Studies The University of Adelaide
  – an interesting concept/collaboration between the university and the Art Gallery of South Australia
  
• Museum Studies @ Macquarie
  – they have quite an active international intake and internship program
  
• Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies Deakin University – they have a wide range of choices in cultural heritage and museum studies
  
• The Collections Australia Network also has a page on different courses
  

Good luck in your search!