T_kens - Collectable NFC Tokens

Problem

Our venture aims to address a major pain point for small museums and galleries in Sweden and across Europe: their large year-to-year financial deficits and difficult competitive position compared to larger, more digitally savvy museums—both of which were amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Especially smaller institutions (i.e. museums and galleries with one or fewer full-time equivalents) and those with collections less suited for visual media have been struggling to stay afloat throughout and even before the pandemic. We additionally wanted to delight regular museum visitors with a way to stay connected to inspiring exhibitions, to support their local cultural institutions, and to take something beautiful home with them after they had left an exhibition.

Research

To understand the problem space, we conducted several interviews around collecting and artful souvenirs as well as digital experiences in the context of museums and public institutions. We supplemented this data with information from extensive desk research to summarise our findings using mind mapping and affinity diagramming. The results informed not only our digital and physical product design but also the overall service and business model design.

Ideation and Development

Throughout the project, several iterations of ideation and development were conducted–each of which deployed various ideation and development techniques such as brainstorming, mindmapping, Worst Possible Idea, How Might We, Crazy 8s, Lightning Demos and solution sketching. By roughly following the structure of a Design Sprint, several competing concepts were developed which ultimately informed the final prototype that was delivered.

Delivery

We proposed a digital platform for museums and galleries to promote their exhibitions and to learn about their visitors that could also offer a beautifully designed digital presence on-par with those of some of the most innovative museums and galleries in the world. The main attraction for visitors, on the other hand, would be a collection of coin-sized and custom designed tokens enabled by near field communication (NFC) technology that would be available for purchase at local museums and that could be used to unlock exclusive digital content related to their favourite museums and exhibitions on said platform.

For museums, this platform would open up the benefits of digital marketing (e.g. promotion and analytics) without requiring time to spend on design or maintenance. It would, additionally, create a new or strengthen an existing stream of revenue, namely retail income from gift and souvenir sales. By offering the so-called T_kens in their stores, they could benefit from an ever-growing network of partnering museums and galleries to provide value to their visitors, creating an additional incentive for visitors to purchase items from the gift shop and to regularly visit new exhibitions. Finally, if these museums decided to do so, the NFC technology inside the T_kens could be used to enable new and exciting interactive experiences within their exhibitions (e.g. treasure hunts or artwork registries). For visitors, the platform would offer a way to access exclusive digital content (e.g. digital magazine articles, virtual meet-and-greets, or interactive digital experiences), to discover interesting local exhibitions, and to connect with their favourite museums and exhibitions while the T_kens would act as small, beautiful, tangible, and affordable reminders of their most inspiring visits and incentivise to more often explore their local cultural institutions’ offerings and to collect new and beautiful pieces of art that they can take with them wherever they go. Finally, they would offer a way for visitors to support their local museums and galleries while still providing plenty of hedonic value just by themselves.

Compared to other ways to establish a digital presence (e.g. Facebook or a custom website), the proposed platform would be specifically designed for museums and galleries and would offer an easy-to-understand way to establish and maintain a digital presence in order to reach and understand a wide audience of past and potential visitors. Compared to other artful museum shop souvenirs, T_kens would offer a way to support specific museums and to establish a relationship between visitor and museum that would go beyond a single visit while still being affordable, beautiful, and personal. These characteristics of our product and services make it innovative in the market and could open up the possibilities for serious improvement of small museums and galleries’ competitive position.

At the end of the project, our product and service was in the prototyping phase. We have created both a physical prototype of the T_kens using a sample NFC token and custom designed stickers and a digital prototype of the campion app including some sample content and some basic interactivity using the design software Figma. Based on the limited and mixed feedback we received to our outreach and pitches, the product and service design would have to be further refined to more accurately match the business’ core value proposition.