Set your guide strategy

Consider having two or three brainstorming sessions with your team to agree on a strategy for your guide. You can use the prompts in this article as a starting place.

Don't worry—your onboarding plan includes enough time to develop a strategy, and access to peers and content experts.

Define your objectives

Taking time to define your objectives and goals is a great way to provide a roadmap for your guide. Clear objectives provide your team with a constant point of reference.

Prompts

• What two or three institutional goals will your guide support or address?
• Will your guide help visitors navigate the physical spaces of your institution? 
• How do visitors currently move through your space? How can you enhance their experience and interpretation?
• How might you use audio content to engage with your audience?
• Will your guide provide additional context for exhibitions through audio, video, or archival materials?
• Will your guide include content that enriches the visitors’ on-site experience? 
  • Will it include a map and help with wayfinding? 
  • Will it provide interpretive information about works currently on view?
• Will your guide primarily be used off-site, before the visit, to familiarize visitors with what they will see? 
  • Will it include deep contextual information, archival materials, or multimedia elements like artist interviews, videos, or interpretations of works that visitors can't see on site?
• Is your guide for a performing arts organization, a time-limited festival, or an archive of temporary events that happen regularly? Or is it for a site where a digital guide isn't appropriate (like an organization that requires an in-person guide)?
  • For guides like these, you might design detailed audio and video content mainly for visitors to use off-site, or to engage visitors while they wait.

Identify your audience

When you have a clear sense of who you expect to use your guide, you can make smart decisions about what to include. You know your organization’s visitors the best, so consider the types of visitors who will use your guide to enhance their experience.

Prompts

• What other types of activities do your visitors enjoy? 
• What is their average age range? 
• What is their comfort level with technology?
• How will they learn about your guide?
• What do they most want from a digital guide?
• What do they want to know? What information are they looking for?
• What in your exhibition or collection sparks curiosity? 
• What questions do they have when they enter a gallery or see a particular object?
• What questions are already answered by existing interpretation solutions (and technologies)? 
  • This is a great discussion to have with your front-of-house (visitor services) team.

Develop an outline

With your guide's objectives and audience in mind, you can draft an outline.

Step 1: Define your home screen sections

If you reviewed the inspirational guides already on the Bloomberg Connects app, you probably noticed that all guides open to a home screen. You can think of the home screen as a table of contents. Section labels, which appear in bold, let you group related content.

For example, you might have sections like:

• On View
• Upcoming Exhibitions
• Audio Tours
• Plan Your Visit

Most guides have at least three home screen sections. For more information, see Recommended home screen sections.

Step 2: Assign content to each section 

If you aren't ready to create your content in the CMS, think about the kind of information that you want to include. This helps you plan your guide. Don’t worry too much about getting your sections “right” at this stage. As your content develops, you can change the sections.

Many organizations find it helpful to outline their guides in tools like Trello or Padlet, but you can also use a simple table or spreadsheet. The example below shows one way to organize your content.