Understanding how the Pen interacts with the API

Detail of instructional postcard now available to museum visitors at entry to accompany The Pen.

Detail of instructional postcard now available to museum visitors at entry to accompany The Pen.

The Pen has been up and running now for five weeks and the museum as a whole has been coming to terms with exactly what that means. Some things can be planned for, others can be hedged against, but inevitably there will be surprises – pleasant and unpleasant. We can report that our expectations of usage have been far exceeded with extremely high take up rates, over 400,000 ‘acts of collection’ (saving museum objects with the Pen), and a great post-visit log in rate.

The Pen touches almost every operation of the museum – even though the museum was able to operate completely without it from our opening in December until March. At its most simple, object labels need NFC tags which in turn needs up-to-the-minute location information entered into our collection management system (TMS); the ticketing system needs a constant connection not only to its own servers but also to our API functions that create unique shortcodes for each visitor’s visit; and the Pens need regular cleaning and their monthly battery change. So everyone in the museum has been continuously improving and altering backend systems, improving workflows, and even the front-end UI on tablets that the ticket staff use to pair Pens with tickets.

Its complex.

Katie drew up (another) useful diagram of the journey of a Pen through a visit and how it interacts with our API.

Single visit 'lifecycle' of The Pen. Illustration by Katie Shelly, 2015. [click to enlarge]

Single visit ‘lifecycle’ of The Pen. Illustration by Katie Shelly, 2015. [click to enlarge]

Even more details of the overall system design and development saga can be found in the (long) Museums and the Web 2015 paper by Chan & Cope.

The digital experience at Cooper Hewitt is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. The Pen is the result of a collaboration between Cooper Hewitt, SistelNetworks, GE, MakeSimply, Undercurrent, and an original concept by Local Projects with Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

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  1. Pingback: Interactive Pen: The New Chalkboard Pointer? | AMST1903: Museum Histories

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