Set Your Guide Strategy

Consider hosting a couple brainstorming sessions with your team to align 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 ample time for developing a strategy, as well as 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 will provide your team with a constant point of reference.

Prompts

• What 2-3 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?
• 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 such as artist interviews, videos, or interpretations of works that cannot be viewed on site?
• Is your guide for a performing arts organization, a time-limited festival, an archive of temporary events that occur regularly, or a site where digital guide use is contraindicated (such as organizations requiring an in-person guide)? 
  • For guides that fit these categories, robust audio and video content may be designed primarily for off-site consumption or to engage visitors while they wait.

Identify Your Audience

Having a clear sense of who you expect to use your guide will help you 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 come to mind when they enter a gallery or encounter 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 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. Bold section labels let you group related content together.

For example, you might have sections like:

• Welcome
• Plan Your Visit
• Collection Highlights
• Now on Display
• Upcoming Exhibitions
• Past Exhibitions
• Support Us

Most guides have at least 3 home screen sections; many guides have six to seven sections. For more information, see Recommended Home Screen Sections.

Step 2: Assign content to each section 

Even if you aren't ready to create the content in the CMS, thinking about the kind of information you want to include will help you plan your guide. Don’t worry too much about getting your sections “right” at this stage. As your content develops, you may choose to combine or eliminate 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. See the example below for just one way to consider organizing your content.